Trip Report My First Year of Local Diving in South Florida

[johndiver999]

And very good advice. Thanks again. I'm very safety first especially in new environments. Btw, anyone familiar with Gung Ho Divers? Some fantastic reviews and appear to very safety conscious.

So how does the "safety first" mantra work with doing shark feeding dives?

I'm not trying to be a wise ass or dissuade you from doing it, nor criticizing you for doing those dives. However, I am really curious to understand how someone who has never been to the area and has relatively few dives, comes to that decision - more particularly, how did you determine that you would be safe?

 

[ABLAB]

Fair questions. Obviously, getting in the water with sharks is inherently dangerous but there are some outfits that are more safety conscious by taking down smaller groups or having a another crew member in the water to keep an eye out. And, those outfits are the ones I'm inclined to dive with given my relative lack of experience. And, there is level of trust given their years of experience running these dives as presumably if they weren't keeping people safe and providing a secure enough service they'd be out of business in the current climate given people's propensity to document and review everything. And frankly, if I feel I'm not comfortable in my skill level/buoyancy after three days of diving in the area I won't do the shark dive. That's the safety first....

 

[johndiver999]

Fair questions. Obviously, getting in the water with sharks is inherently dangerous but there are some outfits that are more safety conscious by taking down smaller groups or having a another crew member in the water to keep an eye out. And, those outfits are the ones I'm inclined to dive with given my relative lack of experience. And, there is level of trust given their years of experience running these dives as presumably if they weren't keeping people safe and providing a secure enough service they'd be out of business in the current climate given people's propensity to document and review everything. And frankly, if I feel I'm not comfortable in my skill level/buoyancy after three days of diving in the area I won't do the shark dive. That's the safety first....

Thanks.

 

[tekkydiver]

Honestly... when you go on a dive boat, you put your life in their hands.
And shark feeding is nothing short of stupid. We see more than enough sharks
in S. Florida under normal conditions

 

[chrisjur]

Nice write-up and a fair evaluation all around.

I'd like to clarify your comments about the Miami dive operators. Tarpoon Lagoon will do two deep dives on some trips, but will also often do one deep dive plus one shallow on other two-tank AOW/deep trips. Divers Paradise will *sometimes* do two deep wrecks as the part of the one deep + "Captain's Choice", but it's dependent on conditions and the group on the boat. Divers Paradise is also the only operator in South Florida that does weekly three-tank deep dives, which will be two deep wrecks plus a third shallow dive.

There is also another great operator in downtown Miami called Ace Diving, which does both deep and shallow dives.

All great operators.