Buddy Dive - bad attitude?

[oly5050user]

[/QUOTE]
(BTY I forgot to mention that the 24# diver is a dive instructor so he definitely knows how to dive. So if Buddy is reading this, please keep in mind that you don't know who you are talking to until you get to know [/QUOTE]
Not that this applies to your friend,but just because a person has a instr. rating does not mean they know how to dive or dive safely. As an example,just last week while I was on Cozumel I witnessed a discussion during check in at the dive shop there.A individual wanted to get on the boat that was being set up for "experienced divers"..Two of the "experienced divers were a 75yr od man-only ow certified, and his wife,along with myself (60 yo) and my wife..This individual was told that he had to do a "check out dive with a DM there before he would be allowed to go. Well this guy pulls out a instr card and still was not allowed to go. After he left I asked the owner what was up with this and he simply informed me that the person in question had dove there previously and cannot dive well enough to keep the DM from being concerned about his or the groups safety..I have owned a LDS and fired "instructors" because of poor dive abilities. A "C" card means little until you see the person set up their gear and get in the water.Does not matter if it is a open water card or master instructor card.Seeing is believing!

 

[grantwiscour]

Duly noted. I haven't been to Bonaire but will keep all the post/conversations in mind for future trips to Bonaire or anywhere.

 

[designbysue]

You also forgot to mention any explanation as to why any diver needs 24# in tropical waters. There clearly should be reasons that you seem to want to withhold. I'm thinking that you might have just managed to rub some folks the wrong way with a series of minor incidents.

Why do I need to mention any explanation? He simply needs that much weight and as you can see by other posters, he is not the only one in the world to need what to some seems like excessive lead. I am not withholding any reasons. I will ask you as I did Oly, do you work at BD. You are jumping to conclusions about people, just as the staff at BD seemed to.

 

[Mossman]

Why do I need to mention any explanation? He simply needs that much weight and as you can see by other posters, he is not the only one in the world to need what to some seems like excessive lead. I am not withholding any reasons. I will ask you as I did Oly, do you work at BD. You are jumping to conclusions about people, just as the staff at BD seemed to.

I'm pretty sure Oly doesn't work at BD. Honestly, I hated BD when I stayed there but that was solely due to the decrepit condition of our room and a very annoying departure process. I found the dive operation to be excellent. If you think that's attitude, try diving with BDA

The fact is, Oly is perfectly 100% correct. Any instructor who "needs" 24 lbs for a 3mm and an AL80 should have his/her certification revoked because that person is in no physical condition to be instructing scuba. It sounds to me like the BD staff were trying to help a severely over-weighted diver lighten his or her load. No wonder y'all have bad knees.

(this is coming from a big fat guy who only carries 12 lbs because he likes to be over-weighted and often sucks his tank down to 250, but really 10 is just fine)

 

[DiverAmy]

I was there the second week of February. It was my first time. I found the dive staff to be relatively friendly, competent, and helpful.

 

[designbysue]

I find it interesting that this post has (for a large part) fixated on the quantity of weight a person requires to dive. If all are as experienced as they state they should realize the amount of lead has little to do with physical make up. Mossman dives with 12 pounds though has admitted he is a large man. Others, of leaner body, tell that they need 20+ pounds. Perhaps a leaner person has a larger lung capacity and is simply more buoyant. Isn't it up to the individual diver to find his/her requirements to make the dives safe and comfortable for themselves and allowing them to accomplish as close to neutral buoyancy as possible? Why are so many so quick to make the assumption that the more weight a person needs, the worse diver they must be. This simply is not true. I have seen people use 12 or less pounds dive like a stone while others with 20+ pounds handle themselves like a fish. The statement that "Any instructor who "needs" 24 lbs for a 3mm and an AL80 should have his/her certification revoked because that person is in no physical condition to be instructing scuba." is ridicules. And how does the amount of lead a person's body requires him to dive safely with, affect his intellectual ability to teach?

 

[redacted]

Why do I need to mention any explanation? He simply needs that much weight and as you can see by other posters, he is not the only one in the world to need what to some seems like excessive lead. I am not withholding any reasons. I will ask you as I did Oly, do you work at BD. You are jumping to conclusions about people, just as the staff at BD seemed to.

Other posters provided an explanation of why they needed that a-typical amount of weight. You don't need to explain anything. But is is becoming more clear to me that part of the problems you encountered may have been your own making.

I too have been questioned by dive ops on my weight requirements. I found that giving them a simple, reasonable answer quickly takes care of their concerns as to whether there customer is incorrectly weighted. I never saw any cause to be offended. To the contrary, I applaud them for doing a good job of taking care of their customers.

Lacking complete and accurate information, one must draw conclusions based on what information they have to work with. Perhaps I too jumped to a conclusion. But it is looking more and more like the right one.

 

[designbysue]

I too have been questioned by dive ops on my weight requirements. I found that giving them a simple, reasonable answer quickly takes care of their concerns as to whether there customer is incorrectly weighted. I never saw any cause to be offended. To the contrary, I applaud them for doing a good job of taking care of their customers.

Lacking complete and accurate information, one must draw conclusions based on what information they have to work with. Perhaps I too jumped to a conclusion. But it is looking more and more like the right one.

The diver did state that that was the weight he required and that he had been diving for over 4 years with over 400 dives. That he has tried with less but this is the amount that he needs to dive safely. How much more simple was the required answer? Seems reasonable to me. What else is there to say? The problem I am trying to explain, is that the staff member would not listen to the explanation, or anything the diver was saying and instead assumed that he would be crashing into the reef. She kept giving him a hard time about the fact that it was too much weight, talking through what he was trying to say. If she would have considered his answer rather than talking though it I too would have considered it as a job well done.

I understand that you all were not witness to the event and because of that many you are doing what the staff was doing - assuming we were doing something wrong. The original post was simply to ask if others had noticed any attitude change at BD. It appears that the majority have not. I have stated therefore that maybe we hit it at a bad time, but really there was an attitude problem and as I stated I was not the only one to notice it that week.

 

[Mossman]

I find it interesting that this post has (for a large part) fixated on the quantity of weight a person requires to dive. If all are as experienced as they state they should realize the amount of lead has little to do with physical make up. Mossman dives with 12 pounds though has admitted he is a large man. Others, of leaner body, tell that they need 20+ pounds. Perhaps a leaner person has a larger lung capacity and is simply more buoyant. Isn't it up to the individual diver to find his/her requirements to make the dives safe and comfortable for themselves and allowing them to accomplish as close to neutral buoyancy as possible? Why are so many so quick to make the assumption that the more weight a person needs, the worse diver they must be. This simply is not true. I have seen people use 12 or less pounds dive like a stone while others with 20+ pounds handle themselves like a fish. The statement that "Any instructor who "needs" 24 lbs for a 3mm and an AL80 should have his/her certification revoked because that person is in no physical condition to be instructing scuba." is ridicules. And how does the amount of lead a person's body requires him to dive safely with, affect his intellectual ability to teach?

I wasn't referring to intellectual ability to teach, I was referring to physical ability. Human physiology doesn't really vary much. A lean diver will be less buoyant than a fat diver. While there may be some mutants with especially large lungs that cause them to be twice as buoyant as someone else of the same size, I highly doubt that's the case with most over-weighted divers.

Too much weight means there is something countering the weight or else the dive would sink like a stone. The answer is either too much air in the BC or too much movement underwater and both lead to inefficient diving at best. Worse, being overweighted can be actually dangerous and can lead to various unpleasant conditions including death.

Another reason why someone who "needs" 24 lbs to sink in a 3mm with an AL80 should not be instructing is because we instructors should be setting an example as a role model. By demonstrating to students that it's OK for the instructor to dive over-weighted implies that it's likewise OK for the student to dive over-weighted. It's a hard habit to break.

 

[designbysue]

Another reason why someone who "needs" 24 lbs to sink in a 3mm with an AL80 should not be instructing is because we instructors should be setting an example as a role model. By demonstrating to students that it's OK for the instructor to dive over-weighted implies that it's likewise OK for the student to dive over-weighted. It's a hard habit to break.

He is not diving over-weighted, and it is not a habit. I realize that many of the posters here are not ready to accept as truth what one posts, but this particular diver IS an excellent diver. Once he descends he adds only a small amount of air to his BC and never changes it from then on - he adjusts his level in the water by his breath alone. He can hang in the water column and not move a muscle, then lower himself to hover over the reef to look at something then rise back in the water column. All without any muscular movement. Would be nice if more of us could control our buoyancy as well.

To assume that fat means more buoyant is not a correct assumption, and you obviously agree by your statement "this is coming from a big fat guy who only carries 12 lbs because he likes to be over-weighted and often sucks his tank down to 250, but really 10 is just fine". I don't know your weigh as I don't believe you stated it but if you are in fact a "big fat guy" as in your statement YOU are diving with too little weight and putting yourself at risk of shooting up at the end of the dive and getting the bends. See how a wide brush stroke of the statement doesn't work?