Hoping to find the joy in diving again

[mselenaous]

Welcome back to diving LeeAnne. Sorry your Coz trip wasn't as much fun (see? you should've come to the Coz Invasion with us...)
Anyway, hope to see you at ScubaShow this year.

 

[Leejnd]

Hi Elena! Believe me, I WISH I'd done the Coz Invasion. Don't worry, the whole trip wasn't ruined - I'd gotten in a lot of awesome dives prior to that bad one, and I even did a few more dives afterwards (although with a different DM!).

I absolutely WILL be at the Scuba Show - in fact I just blocked it off on my calendar. Hope to run into you there!

 

[flots am]

I finally got too damn close to NDL for comfort, so I signaled the DM that I needed to surface. He signaled back, which I thought meant he was going to signal the rest of the team to end the dive. So I let go of the reef, and off I went in the current, and they all....stayed, hunting. WTF?

Not that it matters, but I've been to Coz, maybe 5 times, and four times, the DM that did exactly what he did to you. They have some freaking problem with surfacing when they're supposed to.

I don't know what causes it, but can tell you that I no longer dive in Coz unless I can end the dive when I want to.

So far, I've had a DM keep me down long enough to go into deco on a single AL 80, run my buddy completely out of gas, ignore my "low on air signal" and take me on a deep swim-through when I told him my buddy was new and we shouldn't be doing it, and completely blow the depth limit that the DM set.

Now, I give the DM a courtesy 5 minute warning before I ascend, but when it's time to go up, I take my buddy, shoot my bag and surface. The DM can follow if he wants. Or not. I don't care anymore. I make sure I show the boat driver my SMB so he knows what it looks like.

flots.

 

[Leejnd]

Thanks flots. That was actually the first time I'd had a DM do that to me - or anyone, really. I refused to dive with him after that.

It's NOT a good feeling to be drifting out to sea, all alone, on an overcast day, in washing machine conditions, in the middle of the ocean off Mexico. I wish I'd had a buddy with me - that was probably my biggest mistake, diving with people I didn't really know, and not having one person identified as "MY" buddy. I'd expected the DM to thumb the dive when I thumbed it...and was stunned when he didn't. I never should have let go of that reef until I saw for sure he did. (Lesson #3172 from that dive.)

I was getting ready to shoot my SMB when I saw the dive boat above me, so that was a huge relief! Given the conditions I'm not sure how visible it would have been.

Anyway, thanks for understanding.

 

[Leejnd]

I believe that was the point - he no longer allows DMs to control his dive, after learning that in Coz, that isn't always the best thing to do. As for allowing it to occur in the first place - in Coz the dive ops generally make a pretty strong point of the group staying together, BECAUSE the currents can be so challenging and it's certainly harder for the boat to fetch everyone if you don't stay together. It was for that reason that I stayed down longer than I wanted to on my dive - plus I didn't have a specific buddy to go with me when I decided I'd had enough and it was time to go.

 

[flots am]

Inside the park, you are required by law to dive with the DM. I have no idea what the penalty is (if anything) for abandoning the DM, but I don't actually care anymore.

In any event, it's a non-issue, since I have no plans to return. I'm much happier shore diving with my buddy and no DM on the other islands:

New vacation dive plan:

• Get wet.
• Look at stuff until I'm bored, cold, low on air or low on NDL
• Surface
• Have snack and a drink
• Take nap
• Repeat

flots.

 

[Leejnd]

Inside the park, you are required by law to dive with the DM. I have no idea what the penalty is (if anything) for abandoning the DM, but I don't actually care anymore.

In any event, it's a non-issue, since I probably won't go back. I'm much happier shore diving with my buddy and no DM on the other islands.

flots.

Y'know, I'd forgotten about that! I wonder if I could have gotten in some sort of trouble for having abandoned the DM on my dive? Although that certainly doesn't seem very fair, considering that had I stayed with him I would have gone into deco...something for which I am not trained. And he knew it - I SHOWED my computer to him. I also spoke to the owner of the dive shop afterwards, and he agreed that the DM had blown it.

Anyway, I do expect to do additional dives with DMs. My husband and I are headed to French Polynesia in June, and we're going to do a whole bunch of dives there. Unlike in Coz, I don't believe there are specific laws about diving with DMs there, but I do know that it's the standard practice, as it is in so many other resort-type areas. But this time I'll have my hubby with me, so if we encounter a situation in which I need to thumb the dive but the DM won't go, it won't be a problem.

 

[flots am]

But this time I'll have my hubby with me, so if we encounter a situation in which I need to thumb the dive but the DM won't go, it won't be a problem.

I wouldn't sweat it. I don't think anyplace with a tourist economy would give a tourist a hard time for not letting a local kill or injure them.

flots.

 

[Leejnd]

I wouldn't sweat it. I don't think anyplace with a tourist economy would give a tourist a hard time for not letting a local kill or injure them.

flots.

LOL! Yeah, not exactly a good business model.

While I prefer not to have to dive with DMs, there are some regions on the world where it's almost impossible to get out diving without one. (Unless there's shore diving, of course.) And then you've got Coz, where you're required by law to dive with a DM. There was some other place I've been to like that as well - I think it was the Galapagos? Yes, that's it - you are not allowed to dive in the Galapagos without a licensed guide. While not my preference, I've never had a problem with one before (until that Coz dive). And in areas where it's mostly drift diving, it really is best for everyone to stay together - it's just not very kind to the driver of the boat to have people popping up all over the place, nor is it very safe when you're in an area where there's boat traffic to have scattered heads bobbing.

But I've found most DMs to be very accommodating, and they can often point out stuff that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. In Belize the DM pretty much let Charlie and me go off and do our own thing - he hung with the newbies, and we just made sure we could always see them (with 100+ ft vis and no current, that wasn't a problem!). So when they started heading up, we just finned back over to them so we ended together. In Costa Rica, the DM didn't even make us all surface at the same time - what he did was, when someone in the group got low on air, he'd send them back to the line together and let the rest of us continue (in that case there was no current and the boat was anchored, so it was easy). In Coz, tho, especially in those challenging northern reefs, the group really does need to stay together.

 

[The Chairman]

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