Diving Etiquette from non-photographic divers

[irishsquid]

I think the same group was there on Sunday. During my last dive before heading out back to Tn. I took these pictures with a cheap camera in the upper cavern. The first 2 were taken when I first entered. The last one was when I turned around. 2 divers were on the lower right of the opening looking down at the lower cavern and finning up a cloud like a Huey landing in the desert.

 

[Benzonar]

Wow! Look at 1:03 min. in the film. The guy in the middle has his hands clasped in front of him so he isn't hand sculling, but; he's kicking off the bottom like he's in the starting blocks of a sprint race. Hopefully he'll get better.

The worrying thing is I'm pretty sure that guy was the DM. We turned up on the site as a single boat but just as we were entering the water the other boat turned up. The centre running the other boat has somewhat of a reputation about mass producing divers and I actually said to my buddies to get down before the other boats occupants descended and ruined everything - this was said somewhat tongue in cheek but alas became a self fulfilling prophecy.

 

[Tigerman]

Class or not, theres no excuse to be taught that poorly by the time you do your first OW dive, guided or not. Thats what the damn pool is for!

 

[TSandM]

I live near Puget Sound, which is where I do the majority of my diving. Because of the nature of the Sound, our dive sites are extremely silty. However, VERY few instructors teach non-silting propulsion (sadly, very few instructors or DMs KNOW non-silting propulsion). When the dive leadership doesn't know these techniques, and accepts silting out dive sites as a necessary evil, then you can't get very angry at students who don't know any better.

 

[Tigerman]

Being poorly trained is not the students fault, theire there because the people training them should know better than their students do. That dont excuse people being badly trained though, it just put the blame on the instructor who did the training..

 

[Lee Taylor]

The old kick in the face. Has happened to me so many times I now prepare for it when any diver passes me.

Pushing people aside on a crowded dive boat is another offensive negative behavior I have experienced. Will never forget this woman literally pushing people out of her way. Same one that kicked me in the face.... go figure.

We have a few really bad divers out there.

 

[aquamarin]

These guys were non divers. They were typical first open water dive bottom crawlers with no bouyancy skills. They might have been on a scuba excursion, following a dive leader who obviously didn't consider others when leading his human sandstorm.
They might have been an open water class. I've had the unfortunate experience of leading an open water tour on the day of the Monterey shoot out. We completely ruined the day of a photographer who was carefully setting up a shot of a nudibranch you almost never see on the sand. My little group came along and basically walked through the area creating backscatter for the next 5-10 minutes. There was nothing whatsoever I could do about it. It happens.

I wish Unfortunately, this is something we see frequently here. There are divers being certified who have never been deeper than 6 meters, have no concept of buoyancy and are dangerous to themselves, others - and of course marine life. We regularly have to send our instructors out to babysit those useless divers. And yes, I don't blame the students - but on the other hand, we have to send our well-paid instructors out with them (and of course the divers refuse to pay extra for that), because their courses were rubbish As Benzonar said: we know who they are - but all our attempts to change the situation have been useless

 

[ktkt]

I don't know, it should be pretty obvious to anybody who thinks for a second that stirring up the bottom is a bad idea. Surely they've seen someone else do it, and from there, it's not a big leap to ask, "Hmm, am I making the same mess?" Pretty easy to answer by looking behind you.

Of course, I also agree that instructors should explicitly address these issues, since many people don't seem to figure it out on their own.

Before I was more confident in my buoyancy, I simply stayed further from the bottom. That doesn't seem like too much to ask. Then again, I had decent training in the first place and have always been comfortable in the water.

The thing that really gets me is divers who kick something and then a) don't stop kicking right there, and b) don't bother to look and see if they've hurt someone or knocked off their mask or reg. There are lots of people like this, to the point where I am a "defensive diver" at crowded sites. Around bigger groups, you will often see me diving with my arms up blocking the side of my head

 

[Shasta_man]

The tandem bike they were riding must have been lost in the silt.

While this is bad, the majority of my bad experiences have been the other way around, with "photogs" due to the proliferation of cheap cameras. One strobe killing the reef while they shoot with the other while lying on numerous other critters. However, those aren't usually "photogs" but merely people with cameras. No interest, it's just adding to their list of pics. They become such automatons about taking a pic, usually half assed, of everything they see, you can tell what a drag it becomes to be a dive guide. "Here's another poor critter to blast in the face with your flash." Just want to yell at them to leave the darn thing alone. Marvel at the beauty, feel the privilege to get to see it, and then move on.

 

[RonFrank]

Most new divers want to improve. They generally do not know what they are doing wrong. Here we have a bunch of VERY experienced divers yet none seem to be capable of helping correct the problem? Rather than just complaining on an internet forum wouldn't be nice to make a difference for real? Heck I have taken divers under wing and attempted to help. This is something the needs to be done before or after a dive as trying to communicate during is generally difficult. New divers often have crappy buoyancy and poor trim. This leads to them kicking the bottom. Keeping them farther from the bottom is the first step in keeping them from stirring things up. If you say something after the dive they are generally receptive.

The whining here is growing a bit loud! :cool2: