"Observations show an average 260 touches per one hour dive for a party of four."

[BRT]

What do they with them if they're a total disaster?

They keep someone close to them and try to limit damage and danger. Then they move them to groups that are like them.

 

[BRT]

It wasn't quite like diving in the Puget Sound, but it was certainly respectable. Getting shots without grabbing coral wasn't possible. It was about as stiff as my first drift dive where the DM decided he's never going to deploy a dive flag while on a drift dive again (this was in a class right before I went to PDC/Cozumel).

You learned in the cold, often diving on your own, as did I. When the DM's see you assemble your gear, test it like you know something about it, drop down without having problems and approach the bottom without losing buoyancy control, they go watch someone else and quit worrying much about you.

 

[mediumone]

What do they with them if they're a total disaster?

I've seen DM's, (in Cozumel), hanging on to their bcd the entire dive.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

When the pay is so low, DMs are not going to risk tips unless a situation is serious.

 

[driftwood]

Wow, so much hating on photographers and other crappy divers. 10 feet away from the reef? Confiscating gear? Seriously?

Hey, I'm all for avoiding obviously destructive behavior - I don't touch live coral, sponges, etc... It's not wrong to try to make people better divers, but let's be a bit less arrogant about our expensive little first world hobby.

If y'all really want to preserve aquatic nature, dive locally and skip a flight to the tropics. Pass on a couple of hamburgers and save 2000 gallons of fresh water. Spear your own fish or even catch your own lobsters (hah!), and spare the marine environment the impact of commercial harvesting, purse seine and longline fishing, with all of the bycatch and breeding stock degradation that goes with it. Or even better, become a vegetarian, to stop contributing to water pollution. Don't drink bottled water. Tell people taking cruises that they suck.

It all seems kind of NIMBY. This PARTICULAR tiny piece of the ocean environment is conveniently accessible to scuba divers, so it must be preserved like a sacred relic, but the massive impact that people have on the overall ecosystem doesn't get the same treatment. Anyone want to cancel their trip to Bonaire to save some carbon?

I don't lie down on the reef, but I certainly do lie on the sand to get a macro shot. Sometimes in shallow water on my rebreather.

Becky and I were part of the 2018 Coz Invasion and had signed up for 2019 Fiji trip. We walked a couple grand because we didn't want to dive with a group heavy with photographers .

Without a doubt, some of the nicest people topside and the rudest underwater. The worst was a woman I named "Reef Crasher". I am sure we all know the type.

 

[ScubaBackpacker]

Have you watched some people with camera's?

They are a big problem IMHO. Some do anything to get the shot.

If it was possible, I would prefer to go with guides that did not take photographers.

 

[ScubaBackpacker]

On the other hand I do see great problems when I see a diver with a camera that looks like a research sub, they seldom care about other diver's experience or the protecting the reef…just to get the great shot of the possibly last animal in the ocean.
Dave Dillehay
Aldora Divers[/QUOTE]

Extremely well said. And now it is much worse than during my first stint in diving 1975-1995. Then, relatively few people had cameras. Currently, many if not most people have them and it's so often not even primarily about the organism or the ecosystem -- but about getting something on social media.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

You learned in the cold, often diving on your own, as did I. When the DM's see you assemble your gear, test it like you know something about it, drop down without having problems and approach the bottom without losing buoyancy control, they go watch someone else and quit worrying much about you.

But I had only about 30 dives when I went to Cozumel. This was when I still kept a written dive log. I should check my memory and look up that info. Now I'm curious....

 

[chillyinCanada]

Regardless, MMM is almost certainly correct.

 

[ggunn]

If they switched around dives 1 & 2, I'd concede the point. In my limited experience of just one day, we went on a drift dive with a respectable current (you would work really hard to stay in place and you'd blow through a lot of gas doing so) down to 80 feet and we all went through a swim through single file. That wasn't a checkout dive. The second dive was much lazier, 45 feet or so, for a lot longer with a much milder current (you could easily fin against it).

Nevertheless, the DM is watching you.