First night dive -> First thumbed dive

[TommyEss]

Hi everyone,

Lots of great information here, and this post is really to clarify my thoughts on how a friend and I handled a situation a couple of weeks ago in Cozumel. I'm relatively happy we did the right thing, and nobody got hurt, but I'd like to run it past everyone, see if there's anything we've missed, or could do differently next time.

Setting the Scene

My friend and I had just enjoyed our second 2 tank dive trip out in Cozumel with an excellent op I found through SB. My friend had only been able to join us on this, our second day, and she had dived with her hostel's shop the previous day. We were keen to get in a night dive, as we were told there would be octopus, and it was our last day in Cozumel.

We ended up booking a night dive with her hostel - she said the previous day's dives had been good, although the boat was a little tired, and she needed to switch to her alternative as her reg was letting in water. We arranged the price, including wetsuit hire, and agreed to meet at the hostel at 17:30.

17:30

I meet my friend at the hostel, and we wait for the op to turn up.

...

18:15

The op finally turns up, he's brought his girlfriend(?) in the truck, and starts pulling out gear for us from a side room at the hostel. It then becomes apparent that I need to pay another $10 for my wetsuit - only my friend has the wetsuit included for free. There's ensues a brief, language-barrier addled discussion about honesty, confusion and about being up front about these things. We agree to pay.

We now make our way to the marina, picking up tanks on the way - nothing untoward here. We gear up, he explains light signals to us, and we do our buddy checks. We enter the water as a three, and begin our descent. We get down a few metres, and notice the guide is back at the surface. My friend and I shrug our shoulders at each other, wait a few seconds, and go back up to him. On the surface, he asks if we're ok - to which we give a slightly confused "Yes", and we descend again.

We're not in deep water (I don't think I saw more than 11m the whole dive) - the bottom comes up quickly, and he points out a dead skate on the bed. We continue following him, looking around, getting used to what the lights do and don't pick up. And then he was gone...

My friend, who has over a hundred dives, to my dozen or so at this point, is taking my GoPro rig, which includes a couple of 900 lumen wide beam lights, on top of her wrist mounted torch, so between us, we looked like a mini-Vegas - we turn to each other, shrug again, and begin scouring 360 high and low - I think I can see a torch way up at the surface, which may be our guide, but I can't be certain. I check my air - still a good 2300 psi - we've not been in that long at all. Meanwhile, my friend is swapping to her alternate. I found out later that she had the water issue again. I signal with another shrug and then thumb upwards. She agrees and thumbs too.

My computer is asking for a safety stop, and we attempt to hold a depth of 5m, but stupidly, my dSMB is on the boat - I didn't think we'd be able to signal anyone else at night time...

We didn't get our buoyancy quite right, and slowly descended back down, pausing the safety stop timer on my computer. We tried again, swam up gently, and were watching my computer countdown, when seemingly out of nowhere, our guide reappeared. He asks if we're ok - we reply that we are, because we have loads of air and are physically fine, and we proceed to follow him once again. After another minute or two, he stops, and signals to us a thumbs up.

We get back on the boat without further incidence, and the guide says to us "OK - now we find the reef!" - but we've already been staring at each other and communicating in murmurs and imploring eyes, and we're not happy to do anything else with him. I say we'd like to go home, he pleads for us to give him one more chance, and I say calmy but firmly, "No thanks, we'd like to go home now, please".

Cue the worst atmosphere ever on the short trip back to the marina - I've been to more fun funerals, I promise you, and then we have the ride back to Cozumel to contend with too. I didn't hang around at the hostel when we got back, but they didn't ask my friend for any more money.

We debriefed ourselves over dinner a bit later.

Things we came up with:

1) Weird atmosphere over money - just felt a little fishy, but not a major warning sign at the beginning
2) Equipment, again - my friend had reg issues twice
3) I think we dealt with what was essentially a lost buddy in the correct way - search for 1 minute, then make our way to the surface
4) I'm not getting in the water without my dSMB again
5) It's very hard to hold your depth with no visuals - though I can do some night dives with my dive school on our liveaboard trip in January.

So - any input from the hive mind please?

 

[Diver0001]

Well.... on the whole I think you managed your dive as well as could be expected.

Some unusual things happened for which you weren't prepared or briefed and you accommodated the variations on the fly and the dive ended without incident or injury. It comes across to me as all around good decision making and mature diving.

I can't really speak to the issues you had with the op but as a general rule in your diving career you will encounter well meaning amateurs more often than you think. That's what this sounds like to me. If you really look at it from helicopter level then you can't really fault the DM for not knowing the site well. You COULD, however, fault the OP for sending you out with a DM that didn't know the site well. See the difference? If it were me I would have assured the DM that it wasn't his fault and I wasn't mad. That said I have made a lot of dives and some of them have been aborted for stuff like "brain farts" so I don't get all emotional when I have to end a dive early.

However, as it is, in Cozumel the dive ops are accustomed to having to deal with a lot of Americans who have a reputation for being highly assertive and critical if things go wrong (although from what I hear the Germans win the trophy for this). My assumption, knowing nothing else about this case is that the DM was probably expecting you to demand your money back from the operator, which probably would have come out of his pay check. That could potentially explain his somber mood.

As for making your first ever night dive with a fucton of paraphernalia that you didn't need (gopro, lights etc). I think the complications in making a clean dive in highly limited visibility (be it dark or turbid) are enough to justify leaving the camera on the boat and taking it with you once you have some experience and have more free attention for additional "task loading". That said, it doesn't sound to me like you did badly at all even with the camera, so in the context this is a minor point and a point of attention for your development over the next 50 dives or so.

Does that help?

R..

 

[lamarpaulski]

What you could have done differently/better:

• leave the video camera, and light set-up on the boat. Confuses and distracts on your first night dive. It occupies your buddy's hand(s) and attention while you guys are losing contact with your guide.
• obtained/insisted on a fully functional regulator for buddy.
• slowed everything down. Speak up. Ask questions. Worked out the dive plan even with language barrier. I have always been pretty impressed with Cozumel dive guides/captains so you may have gotten unlucky.
• Your "goal" (and your buddy's goal) should have been simply for you to adjust to and experience a safe first night dive - not videoing an octopus...as cool as they are.
• Done a simple night snorkel from shore first to get a bit of the night dive experience without the hassle of full scuba gear and boat etc. You can see a ton of cool creatures this way.

Did you have back-up lights? Glow sticks ? Was there a boat crew ? Was there a current ? You leave out some info that would give a better idea of what happened.


I have never really used smbs (although carried) at the end of nite dives. I usually dive shallow from shore at night so not as much an issue. In my experience in Cozumel and elsewhere its your lights that indicate where you are to the boat but I have read some use glow sticks/strobes attached to them.

(btw I have a nice octo video from a Coz nite dive but that was after lots of night dives. It is a marvelous place to night dive but you have to get the basics under control first.) .
.

 

[scubadada]

I always carry an SMB, have not used it at night, but could, in conjunction with your light. I do always carry a strobe at night and/or when visibility might be limited. I carry a back up light.

 

[AdivingBel]

Seems like a bit of confusion from the outset, probably had to be there to fully understand. Might have done without the camera rig with it being your first night dive, but buddy has 100+ dives and they are driving the rig, mmm...o.k.. Your buddy goes on their safe second due to reg malfunction...dive over. IMHO