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Correct. Malta is the joker in the deck, except it isn't funny.

On a different note, people often fear potential liability for something randomly happening on a dive trip on which they have shown a rescue diver card or a professional card. We just had an exhausting and frustrating thread in which someone was arguing that could happen with a dive buddy, but a...

People are often advised to show the lowest necessary card for fear that they will be asked to do things, like take on a beginning diver. I have never seen or even heard authoritatively of that happening. Dive operators generally want their customers to be happy, especially the ones most likely...

Yes, and I would say the implication is correct--we do not have reliable information for what happened. The victim's mother has said that the story we had was inaccurate, but so far we have nothing we can rely on.

The victim's mother just posted in the Florida thread, where this incident was also being discussed. According to her the boys were highly experienced, with many dives both locally and in ither countries. She believes the stories being told are highly inaccurate.

Aurora Reservoir is arguable better, but not by a lot. I think for practice your best bet is still New Mexico. In Santa Rosa, New Mexico, the Blue hole is a sinkhole that is about 85 feet deep at the entrance to the cave opening at the bottom. The water is pretty clear, and there are two dive...

Front Range tech diving is pretty much all done in a private lake in New Mexico. It is about 280 feet deep. I have not dived there myself in a couple years.

The Encyclopedia of Recreational Diving said a primary concern was that beyond 130 feet, narcosis affects just about everyone.

I have not been around for a while, and I am gong to bow out of this thread after explaining this. If you are a bit sick and decide maybe you shouldn't go to a concert, but you finally decide to go because you paid the money, the worst case scenario is that you are uncomfortable during the...

Ah! So the policies common in Palm Beach County must represent the way everything is done in the rest of the world. Got it! Note that I said that I have canceled dives because of sickness on several occasions, and I have never been charged. The dive operators I used don't ask for a credit card...

When I took cave training, I asked about carrying a spare mask. My instructor said that in 40 years of diving and instructing, he had never seen or heard of a lost mask, and it was up to me if I wanted one. I have not been diving 40 years yet, but I have never heard of one, either, although I...

I am now retired, but when I was instructing, if a student is too sick to dive, the class is rescheduled. That was true in both shops where I worked, and it was true when I was independent.

My experience is with a whole lot of dive operations in a whole lot of places, and I have only run into a few with a no refund policy, with the exceptions of major trips, as I mentioned in my first post. It seems some people think that any dive operation that does not charge you if you get sick...

Yes. You pack your bag the night before the trip, all set to go. Then something happens. For me most recently (last year), I believe it was something int he dinner I ate that made me wake up and vomit during the night and left me queasy in the morning. Something similar happened to me once or...

That is still true. The Scuba Diver rating limits you to diving with a professional. It is rarely done. The only one I ever saw personally was when I was a DM assisting a class with a young student whose autism led the instructor to believe (after major instructional effort) that the students...

First, for those who don't know it, the following is often called the golden rule of diving: Anyone can call any dive for any reason without any questions. It means that if someone is uncomfortable with a dive, either before the dive (because of conditions or anything) or during the dive, then...

If you want to read a good history of the early days of scuba instruction, read the History of NAUI, written by the people who founded it. Be warned, though--it will explode loads of popular myths.

The AOW was initially introduced around 1964-65 (not sure of the exact year) by Los Angeles County. They were concerned that so many divers were getting their OW certification and then dropping out of diving. They felt that adding a more advanced course that introduced divers to different...

I can't speak to the beginning of the concept, but I think I can tell from my own experience as an instructor how it became so popular. First of all, we have to understand the difference between a signal and a sign. A signal is something you do deliberately to convey information to others. A...

That's how I would understand it as well. Reading that, I cannot understand why anyone would choose DiveAssure.