It was my first day as a Divemaster guide and the lessons I learned from it will stay with me for life. After getting my DM certification, I raised my hand to guide pleasure divers on the next weekend trip organised by my Dive Resort. I ended up on a boat with 5 divers. I was responsible to guide two of them. Both were Advanced Open Water certified but with less than 25 logged dives and new equipment that they wanted to try. It was the first time I guide divers other than my close friends/buddies. The first dive was perfectly ok. All rules were followed strictly, clear communication, no incidents and a safe return on time to the boat. After a 1-hour surface interval, we geared up to explore the second and last dive site of the day. It was a reef site around a rock in the Indian Ocean. The boat couldn't get too close to the rock, so there was a bit of swimming that we needed to do. I jumped in the water first, took a compass heading and waited for my two divers to join. I told them at the surface that we must stay close together as we swim underwater towards the rock using my compass. We signalled OK and descended. One of them seemed quite inexperienced and was struggling a bit with his new BCD. When I saw him lagging behind the other I signalled to them to stay close and buddy-up . When they got together, we exchanged OK signals and I started to swim. I was ahead with both of them behind me. After 1 or 2 minutes, I looked behind to check on them but couldn't see them! I made a full turn to look for bubbles in the water but saw nothing. Viz was 8-10 metres. I was at 8m depth. After looking around underwater for 1 minute, I decided to ascend to look for them at the surface but there was no sign of them. Water was a bit choppy so I couldn't see their bubbles on the surface. I waived to the captain on the boat but he was far and didn't seem to understand my signal. I started to worry. I descended again to look around, and that's when I saw a black tip reef shark wandering close to me! I got more worried as I wondered how the two divers would have reacted to the shark encounter without me. I watched the shark disappear, then ascended once again. Still no sign. There was a snorkler close by so I asked her if she had seen two divers alone. To my relief, she pointed me to where she saw them last. They were not too far, but were drifting with the current away from the rock. Finally after 8-10mns they decided to surface! We regrouped again, I checked that they were ok and then we descended again to explore the site. This time I stayed really close and was literally looking back at them every 10 seconds! Lesson learned: I got too pre-occupied with my compass and didn't check on them soon enough. I should have known from the first dive that they were slow and inexperienced. I should NEVER let divers in a group that I'm leading out of my sight again. I must also be very firm and clear about the buddy system and surfacing after 1mn if we lose each other. Thoughts and advice are much welcome...
