Disturbing trend in diving?

[boulderjohn]

But, SOBs certainly are!

Spoiler

Same Ocean Diver!

That doesn't work when each group is supposed to have a dive flag. Reach the surface with no flag 15 minutes after your group got on the boat and people will not be happy. In a case where that happened years ago (with the same operation I was just using) another boat picked up the SOB, published a video on YouTube claiming the boat had lost its diver, and started a smug ScubaBoard thread. That created such a Hell of a problem, with a threatened lawsuit, that it is one of only a couple of cases I know of in which ScubaBoard deleted a thread in its entirety.

 

[scubadada]

In many cases, all it requires is a DM who cares. I related earlier a story about what has happened to me several times on a dive operation here in Florida. Solo diving is not allowed, and as a single diver I had to be assigned to someone else. In each case, the DM, knowing dull well that I am an advanced diver, asked an instructor and young (early teens) diver to take me as a buddy. What am I going to say? "I don't want to dive with them?" Any other group would have been perfectly fine with me, but in each of these cases, the dives were predictably short. In the last dive (last week), I reached the surface with about 2,000 PSI.

I would happily choose another operator, but there is little choice where I am presently.

Hi @boulderjohn

I believe you do your Florida diving down in Pompano or nearby. Do you have to do the wrecks or are nice reefs OK? Have you done any diving in Boynton Beach (no guide) or Palm Beach (guide)? The dives here are all an hour.

 

[boulderjohn]

Hi @boulderjohn

I believe you do your Florida diving down in Pompano or nearby. Do you have to do the wrecks or are nice reefs OK? Have you done any diving in Boynton Beach (no guide) or Palm Beach (guide)? The dives here are all an hour.

Right now I do just about anything. I have a transportation issue going that far north. My wife and I share one car.

 

[scubadada]

Right now I do just about anything. I have a transportation issue going that far north. My wife and I share one car.

Of course, depends on the wife. My wife does not dive with me in the late fall, winter, or early spring. She is content with riding her bike, including to the beach, or relaxing in our townhouse just north of Boynton, when I drive up to Palm Beach or Jupiter. She will drive me and pick me up from Boynton, only 3 miles, if she wants the car.

You might want to expand your horizons, the diving in SE FL is quite good. I am aware that the dive options south of me have become more limited.

 

[tekkydiver]

So, lately I've seen some things posted that have me raising my eyebrows a bit.
There have been a few stories posted about people relying completely on the divemasters or guides for their bottom times, NDL status, basic dive profiles. This seems to be in Mexico from what I gather but it might include some other locations.
The trend seems to be that these divers in question don't have computers or depth gauges/any kind of timing device and rely 100% on the divemasters to take care of them and keep them safe.
Is this a thing?

In my neck of the woods, or more appropriately ocean.... we dive the 1st reef --- 50 to 60 feet. With 34% nitrox we can stay down an hour and including 3 minute safety stop. Which is about what we get out of one tank. In this situation a computer in isn't really needed. I have a one but only using when diving the 2nd and 3rd reef. In that case it's helpful to keep out of deco

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I read that comment from @Leatherboot69 as a reference to what PADI says in its blog about its history...



Not so much that PADI changed something internally to make it more modular, but basically the difference between the PADI system and what was previously then common training from NAUI, BSAC and others which seems to have been more classroom time, more theory, more "linear" instruction.

All way before my scuba time (and I was still a pre-teen in 1978), and possibly I am misunderstanding either leatherboot's comment or yours - but that was how I took it...

Thank Dennis Graver, my NAUI ITC course supervisor. He did some really revolutionary things with dive instruction. But during our NAUI ITC in1973, he made us do actual mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration on our buddy through 200 yards of surf in California.

SeaRat

 

[John C. Ratliff]

The multiple hurdles of actually doing "real life diving" can be too high, and many don't want to invest the time, effort or money, and are perfectly happy with their warm water holiday dives once a year in rental gear that doesn't require much of them. (some would disagree).

Autonomous dives with your own gear? We'd argue that is a different ballgame.

When I started diving in the late 1950s and early 1960s, we had a different quality of person starting diving. Many of us were on the local swim team, and had already taken the Red Cross Lifesaving and Water Safety course. We were very comfortable in the water, having done practices with the Red Cross course in floating (for 10-15 minutes), long distance swimming, learning to rescue a swimmer (surface dive to his/her knees, turn the person around so as to climb up their back to the surface, reach around and grab under their far arm, and begin swimming them ashore). So we were a different type of person taking up scuba diving; it was far easier for us.

SeaRat

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Do any of you log your dives? I’ve been going over my dive logs from the 1970s and 1980s while writing a book, and they have been invaluable. Mine are written, but in the last 20 years I’ve been logging my dives on a log that I developed that is computerized. But, I’ve lost a few of those files, but haven’t lost my hand-written dive logs. The hand-written ones seem to be less prone to being lost.

SeaRat

 

[dmaziuk]

Do any of you log your dives? I’ve been going over my dive logs from the 1970s and 1980s while writing a book, and they have been invaluable. Mine are written, but in the last 20 years I’ve been logging my dives on a log that I developed that is computerized. But, I’ve lost a few of those files, but haven’t lost my hand-written dive logs. The hand-written ones seem to be less prone to being lost.

I have a computer for that and I push the subsurface log files to a private repo on github for "cloud backup".

The couple of dives in the local lakes here, the briefing included "you may want to leave your computers topside because the bottom is at no-limit depth and the silt may get into sensor openings and mess up your expensive birdix". I wore my cheap Cressi to log the dives. I'd also wear it on the kind of dives that prompted this thread, if I did them, for the same reason: to log the dive.

 

[Diver-Drex]

Do any of you log your dives? I’ve been going over my dive logs from the 1970s and 1980s while writing a book, and they have been invaluable. Mine are written, but in the last 20 years I’ve been logging my dives on a log that I developed that is computerized. But, I’ve lost a few of those files, but haven’t lost my hand-written dive logs. The hand-written ones seem to be less prone to being lost.

SeaRat

I log dives with students and technical dives. I hadn’t logged dives for 20+ years until I decided to DM and needed proof of dives.