Do you have any dive travel regrets?

[olphart]

Booked a fairly pricey trip supposedly with a good sized group heading off to dive great wrecks. "No problem getting a dive buddy.", he said. It turned out there was a pair of tech divers who only dove together and the organizer and his wife who also dove tech. Ended up hiring a dive buddy and tagging along with the owner on another day.
The owners were great hosts, the diving was outstanding and if I had done my research, I would have realized that I'd need a car to shop for groceries, and that the resort was B&B not AI, (not even sure how I got that idea..dummy!!).
In short, not preparing sufficiently on what could have been an outstanding trip.

 

[Wingy]

Yes. I regret not taking up diving and travelling together 20 or 30 years ago. Doing my best to make up for it now.

 

[KDAD]

^^^^
This. Not doing it sooner. All the exotic locales that I have been to and could have dived....

 

[NYCNaiad]

I regret not taking up diving and travelling together 20 or 30 years ago. Doing my best to make up for it now.

YES!

I regret wasting time looking for U/W photo ops. Now, when I travel dive, I leave the camera topside. It's now about looking all around me, living in the moment, and trying to absorb the beauty of the underwater world with just my eyes.

I love photography, but I totally agree with you that most of the time it's really fantastic to just live in the moment of your dive.

 

[TravisD]

Schlepping all the gear along to do two mediocre dives at an AI resort.

 

[Buliwyf]

Blowing a dive taking pictures of the exact same creatures that everyone else has, and there are tons of pics on Google.

Experience the dive 1st, take pics 2nd. That should be the priority for me.

 

[DeputyDan]

Only regret was that I signed up for a small group trip to Bonaire. The Thursday before we were leaving on Saturday everyone announced that they were not going. They had not purchased airfare and had cancelled room reservations - only I had purchased airfare. The trip was fine but I would not have gone if I had known everyone would back out.

 

[Dizzi Lizzi]

Nice read for me as I have never gone on a dive vacation. January will be my first. I get from this thread some things to do and some things to pass on...camera will be in limited use for sure.

1. A shark feeding dive, a dive chumming for sharks, a sting ray feeding dive & a semi-captive dolphin dive

What are your dive travel regrets?

Once I took a elephant ride at a circus. Of all the things I have ever regretted doing this is high on the list. I felt so bad (after) that I was taking advantage of this beautiful captive creature. I think I will pass on any events that include captive/semi captive animals. Feeding dives are super iffy to me, after all your teaching the silly creatures that seeing you =food. Not sure I would like sharks to have that in their head. And yes, I haven't even gone to a zoo since the elephant ride.

Waiting for my nautilus to be shipped, and still need to research my C0/02 sensor.

 

[NYCNaiad]

Nice read for me as I have never gone on a dive vacation. January will be my first. I get from this thread some things to do and some things to pass on...camera will be in limited use for sure.
...
Waiting for my nautilus to be shipped, and still need to research my C0/02 sensor.

Glad the thread can help a little bit. btw you'll see oft repeated on this board that most of us don't recommend using a camera when you're a newbie at all. It just adds too much to the task loading. I didn't take a camera down till I had well over 100 dives. If you work on all your other skills by the time you do take a camera with you, you'll be at less risk & also take better pictures.

The Nautilus takes a little bit of time to set up so my suggestion is to do so before you leave for your dive trip & then take it on every dive--even "easy, nearby dives". When I was left at sea, another diver had a Nautilus but didn't take it on that dive with him. (!)

Also, this combo Oxygen & CO analyzer came up in another thread. I haven't used this one, but it's worth looking into as 2 divers in that thread said they had it & liked it. It definitely seems much more affordable than the others out there, but you'd need to do more research on it.

It really sounds as if you'll be much better prepared than I was when I started. Happy diving!

 

[Dizzi Lizzi]

@NYCNaiad While I do bring my gopro (in movie mode) it rarely gets wet. Usually if boat diving I will bring it out for the 3rd (last) dive, and then its a 50/50 if it even gets turned on. I'm aware of the task loading issue and since we dive without a divemaster that's the reason it stays off. I'm a bit of a photography buff and have avoided even looking at housings for my camera as doing anything more than pointing a gopro in the general direction seems way to complicated at this point. What I do plan on using it for is having us filmed so we can see exactly how goofy we really look, and what we need to work on. The way i see myself in my head is SOOOO different from what the film shows (be still my sculling hands). Good learning tool.

Re the nautilus I do plan on bringing it to every single dive. The diver left behind by sundiver here in SoCal scared the crap out of me. I realize she was probably in trouble long before the boat left but still, they did not even realize she was missing.

Thanks!!