Dive Operations enforcing rules

[RJP]

One thing I have wondered about is how badly a diver would have to perform during a checkout dive before an operator would pull the plug on them diving.

I was on a California dive boat where an instructor and student were doing some or other class. I heard them debriefing after the first dive, with the instructor telling the student - in an almost bragging "see how perceptive I am" fashion - about the importance of really dialing your weighting in...

"I could tell I was over-weighted by about a pound when we descended, because I crashed into the bottom a lot hard than usual."

Really? How hard do you usually crash into the bottom?

[shakehead]

 

[Tigerman]

In all situation where I felt the operator was too fussy I was not angry nor did I debate with them about their rules or how they enforced them, but I personally believe there can be some flexibility and understanding if there is no danger or inconvenience caused. And it certainly influences my decision making on choosing an operator. A photographer staying a few extra minutes in the shallows near the boat in good conditions is not a major issue in my opinion. The crew can see you and call you up if there was an emergency. I have worked as a dive guide and a dive shop manager and we would never make a fuss about such a situation. Customers who try to fit diving into a packed schedule can be a major problem. We are dealing with nature and nothing is predictable. Do you forego a random whaleshark encounter so that one person can meet an appointment they have set 30 mins after the boats scheduled arrival time?

Obviously there is no clear right or wrong in these scenarios but diving is supposed to be fun after all. And I always thought recreational dive operations were part of the tourism and hospitality industry where a little customer service can go a long way.

---------- Post added ----------



I have seen divers who descended, ascended and did part of their dive with the DM holding their tank valve to stabilize their buoyancy. Shocks me how they were certified in the first place.

But generally a check out is to assign you to an appropriate buddy/group and dive site.

Yes, there IS a clear right or wrong.
If you agree to a dive plan saying no more than 130 feet and surface at maximum 60 minutes of dive time, violating any of those two IS A CLEAR WRONG.
Plan the dive, dive the plan. If you dont like the dive plan, you say so BEFORE you dive.
If you dont surface after 70 minutes when you agreed to 60 I would not blame anyone for calling rescue services and theyd be in their full right to pass the bill on to you for the completely unneccesary operation. Not to mention the fact that you could potentially be keeping up services that potentially is needed elsewhere.
And then theres also the fact that you worry the other guests and 10 minutes is more than plenty for you to be dead already.

I guess you could always look at it this way; How long would YOU want to be missing under water with a serious problem before rescue measures is taken?
I know for sure that I would NOT want to be in a bad situation 3 minutes more than Id have to, much less 10..

 

[John_B]

Yes, just like taking away their gloves saves the reef...neither suggestion make much sense...

Someone here on SB has a signature that says, "Stupid should hurt in some fashion.". I think that applies in this case. A ban on gloves may not stop divers from thoughtlessly trashing a reef, but hopefully the reef gets a collective chance to bite back...

 

[Nishan]

Yes, there IS a clear right or wrong.
If you agree to a dive plan saying no more than 130 feet and surface at maximum 60 minutes of dive time, violating any of those two IS A CLEAR WRONG.
Plan the dive, dive the plan. If you dont like the dive plan, you say so BEFORE you dive.
If you dont surface after 70 minutes when you agreed to 60 I would not blame anyone for calling rescue services and theyd be in their full right to pass the bill on to you for the completely unneccesary operation. Not to mention the fact that you could potentially be keeping up services that potentially is needed elsewhere.
And then theres also the fact that you worry the other guests and 10 minutes is more than plenty for you to be dead already.

I guess you could always look at it this way; How long would YOU want to be missing under water with a serious problem before rescue measures is taken?
I know for sure that I would NOT want to be in a bad situation 3 minutes more than Id have to, much less 10..

It was not a planned violation of regulations. The dive plan was followed other than hanging for about 5 minutes extra in the shallows close to the boat in good conditions to photograph an interesting subject. I think its safe to assume that had a manta ray swum past, the rest of the group including the DM would have violated their time limits but in this case others didn't find a jellyfish interesting. In the situation I mentioned it was clear and easy for anyone to see there was no emergency, the diver was clearly visible to the boat crew and it was easy to recall if even a few minutes was too much. Ok technically it was a 'violation'. I just felt they could have understood the situation and dealt with it better. Obviously others disagree and that fine.

Anyway, Lets move on.

Cheers!

 

[DevonDiver]

It was not a planned violation of regulations.....Ok technically it was a 'violation'. I just felt ....

Enough said. There's always an excuse.

 

[boulderjohn]

It was not a planned violation of regulations. The dive plan was followed other than hanging for about 5 minutes extra in the shallows close to the boat in good conditions to photograph an interesting subject. I think its safe to assume that had a manta ray swum past, the rest of the group including the DM would have violated their time limits but in this case others didn't find a jellyfish interesting. In the situation I mentioned it was clear and easy for anyone to see there was no emergency, the diver was clearly visible to the boat crew and it was easy to recall if even a few minutes was too much. Ok technically it was a 'violation'. I just felt they could have understood the situation and dealt with it better. Obviously others disagree and that fine.

Several years ago I was on a dive trip that was sponsored by the dive shop for which I worked as an instructor. In fact, about half the people on the trip were instructors at the shop. One one dive, we were supposed to finish by a certain time for a number of reasons. We all got back on the panga as directed at the appointed time, all except for one diver who was doing exactly what you describe, hanging out in very shallow water right by the boat while he took picture after picture after picture of what he was seeing there. He was actually shallow enough that he sometimes broke the surface as he sought just the right angle for that perfect picture. When that happened, the DM would try to get him to get out of the water. Everyone was at first annoyed, but eventually we went to anger and then to fury as he continued to ignore and inconvenience everyone else while he focused on what he wanted to do--after, all, he was so much more important than anyone else that we would all be happy to let him do whatever he damned well pleased, wouldn't we? He did not leave the water until his tank was completely empty.

To a large extent, his supposition about his importance was largely correct. He would have gotten a real chewing out from the rest of us (and I suspect the DM as well) if he weren't the sole owner of the shop and the employer of most of the rest of the people on the boat.

 

[Tigerman]

I was on a California dive boat where an instructor and student were doing some or other class. I heard them debriefing after the first dive, with the instructor telling the student - in an almost bragging "see how perceptive I am" fashion - about the importance of really dialing your weighting in...

"I could tell I was over-weighted by about a pound when we descended, because I crashed into the bottom a lot hard than usual."

Really? How hard do you usually crash into the bottom?

[shakehead]

Wonder what he does if hes diving a site where there IS no bottomn (Well, there always is a bottomn, but it could be 1000 feet down)...

Ohyeah, thats why I like checkout dives, any sane person would tell him to stay away from those places..

 

[Darnold9999]

I had a discussion on this topic with the owner of a dive charter.

The particular trip in question was a live-aboard in Asia.

The diving was in a protected area and national park, so there were rules above and beyond the rules of the dive charter.

There was a large group on the trip (about 15 people or 2/3 of the guests) who either ignored the rules or generally were not skilled enough to follow the rules.

For instance, one of the rules was "Don't touch the reef."

Their buoyancy skills were so bad that they were always grabbing coral or kicking fans.

The dive master kept encouraging them to stay further away from the reef, and kept waving his finger "No-No!" underwater.

Everyone else on the boat was also getting rather fed-up with this group's lack of concern, or lack of skill, or both.

None of them had octos, either, only a single 2nd stage regulator.

This group complained about the dive master to the owner of the dive charter.
The dive master was threatened with termination because he was "irritating" the guests.

Fortunately, though a mutual friend, I ended up having dinner with one night with the owner of the dive charter, not long after the trip.

I stressed that he, as the owner, should be supporting his crew when they are trying to enforce safety and conservation.

He should not be threatening to fire his dive master because the DM is trying to protect the reef from such a consistent assault.

The owner should make it clear during the registration process that safety and conservation measures will be strictly enforced.

Money talks.

If we all tell the owners of dive charters that we are unhappy with the laxidasical manner in which conservation is enforced, and that we will be taking our cash elsewhere next time, then maybe we can make a difference.

Was recently on a similar charter in Asia in a National Park (probably the same one).

Briefings always had some component of "stay off the reefs - don't touch or damage them"

This particular group was unbelievable - trashed the reef everywhere they went. I went so far as to make sure I was upcurrent from the worst of them if at all possible they generated so much cr*p in the water

One diver even had kneepads to protect the reef from damaging his wetsuit.

Another had fins that were completely trashed on the top - from thrashing the reef.

Almost all of them were extremely experienced divers with many hundreds - sometimes thousands of dives. All but a few were some of the worst divers I have ever seen with respect to damaging the reef.

The group even complained about "too many wall dives" because you can't do macro photography on a wall. (it seems you need a reef to lie on to get good pictures?????)

Discussions with the dive guides on the charter essentially went - we know what is happening, we warn them away from the reef and have tried pulling them off, but we were instructed by the owner to "make this group happy" so we let it go. We are not happy.

This is one case where I wish the rules had been enforced, but as you say money talks and this group had chartered the entire boat, except for a couple of spots.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

How about this one.. Our college dive club is doing a road trip to palm beach. We have this one macho, guy who is somewhat of a bragger and we are really not to sure of his dive skills. We decide to do a dive onto a wreck in 80 feet.

We are dropped upstream maybe 500 feet and told to descend as fast as is comfortable and drift north following the current and we should hit the wreck. We stay on the wreck for 20-25 minutes then leave the wreck and drift off and ascend. One diver, (me) is pulling a surface float and rope.

EVERYONE is told more than once that you spend 5 minutes max looking for the wreck, if you get separated from the group or don't find the wreck come up and the boat will re-drop you (if you want). Do not allow yourself to drift off down current in a 1-2 kt current! This is stressed.. ......hit the wreck in 3-5 minutes or COME UP. This is SOP for wreck diving in the area..

Well we do the nice easy dive and we are missing "that guy". It has been maybe 40 minutes since we splashed. The capt and I are kinda freaking.. He drops me alone to do a quick scan over the wreck, we are concerned that maybe he is trapped inside or something and I am making a 10 minute bounce to look for bubbles, a body or whatever. 10 minutes,, I find nothing and ascend. Now we are really worried.

We leave the dive site and begin to move north (down current) and get a call on the radio about a boat finding a dive about 2 miles from the wreck. We run down there, pick him up and he is just as happy as an idiot.

So we quiz him.. what happened? "well I had a little trouble equalizing, and when i got down i didn't find the wreck".. So what did you do?

"I just drifted and swam with the current and found some cool reef and then came up when i got low on air". I was about ready to strangle him and tried once more to explain to him why we had rules and proceedures and the fact that him being miles from the boat alone with no marker float (this is before smb's were invented) is "dangerous",

The next trip a month later, I heard him talking in the school van on the ride down and he was telling another diver that the capt of this boat was not very good, because he lost him. I pretty much lost it ....It is a wonder we even let him dive with the club anymore. Some people are incapable of learning or following the rules.

 

[caseybird]

Oh, we would not be quiet about it on our boat. Trust me.

:d

The correct pronunciation is Joisey, you know.