JamesK
Contributor
We could go on forever with butt hole cave tech DM instructor tank monkey rescue aow stories. Any group of people will have jack asses.
Not everyone thinks cave diving is the pinnacle of SCUBA!
- Thread starter Snake101
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So based on a few stories you've heard from "friends" you're willing to condemn an entire class of people you've never actually met?
I have some similar first-hand stories ... things that people have said to me.
Not too long ago, while doing a solo dive at my local dive site, I was verbally accosted in the parking lot by someone who found the very idea of solo diving offensive. He informed me I was breaking "every rule of diving I've ever been taught". Never mind that the idiot had less than 50 dives ... what he'd been "taught" was a typical OW/AOW back-to-back class ... and he was speaking to someone who does more dives in two months than he has done in his entire life. He was religiously self-righteous and convinced he knew more about what I was doing than I did. Later on I saw the guy in the water and understood why he needed a buddy.
Over the years I've been harangued on multiple occasions by old-timers who take one look at my equipment and, deciding I'm one of those damned DIR divers, feel the need to tell me how many years they've been diving and they've never needed to wear all that "tech sh!t". A couple of them are long-time instructors at local dive shops that don't sell "tech sh!t".
We can go on and on. Point is, I'm not going to use my experiences ... or rumors I "heard" from a friend of a friend ... to put down newbies or old-timers because of a couple of incidents with people who fit that particular description. Everyone's an individual, and deserves to be judged based on their own actions ... not those of someone who is "one of those".
If you don't like cavers, stay out of cave country. Then they won't bother you.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
kotik
Contributor
Yep.
I've encountered butthead cave divers. I've encountered a lot more that were just the nicest people. Same with shop owners. Hell, just now we've learned there are OW divers out there who brag about how big their knife is and that are just itching for a chance to 'defend themselves'. I've met many more that are great friendly people though.
You can find douchebags anywhere you go if you're looking for them.
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USFpsychDiver
Contributor
As a beginning cave diver, my experience has been that cave divers as a whole are an extremely helpful and supportive group. I've had a lot of highly experienced divers agree to dive at my level to give me practice and to guide me in to areas I haven't seen before (within my training limits). I've kicked up a silt-bomb or two and banged my tanks on the ceiling, emerging with some cave in my hair, and no one has had anything negative to say, probably because they recognize that, as a cave diver with limited experience, I'll make a few mistakes.
I've also had uniformly good experiences with the dive shops that cater to cave divers, including Cathy at Dive Outpost, something I cannot say for all the dive shops I've gone to that cater to the OW diver. I've found the people at the cave dive shops to be very well informed, polite, and helpful. Some of the shops explicitly serve both OW and cave divers (e.g. Cave Country Dive Shop). The run-of-the-mill OW dive shops have been much more of a mixed bag, some excellent, some poor, and at least one I consider borderline fraudulent. Now, if a someone came up to me in the parking lot at Peacock springs wearing a single AL80, a mask with a snorkel attached, and carrying a Princeton Tec pistol-grip light, and asked me where the cave was, they might perceive my reply as unhelpful or even rude. I can imagine a similar scenario occurring in one of the area dive shops, perhaps simply due to miscommunication.
It is true that cave divers, like many proficient people, have less tolerance for those with poor technical skills, particularly since those poor skills can lead to fatalities in the cave, both for the unskilled individual and those diving with him or her. This is no different from the low tolerance a DM might have for an OW diver who crashes into the coral and wallows around on the bottom silting out the dive for the rest of the group.
The worst (and only) haranguing I ever got related to diving was from a boat captain when I surfaced 50 yards down current from the boat on an ocean dive and had a hard swim back against the current; I got back aboard and he yelled at me long and hard about how he'd never had a fatality on his boat and how I could have had a heart attack swimming back to the boat. True, a navigation error on my part, leaving me with the choice of exceeding my gas supply safety margin continuing to look for the anchor line, or coming up where there's plenty of air and doing a surface swim to the boat. I chose the latter and never went out with him again. So butt-nuggetry is not the exclusive realm of certain cave divers.
I've also had uniformly good experiences with the dive shops that cater to cave divers, including Cathy at Dive Outpost, something I cannot say for all the dive shops I've gone to that cater to the OW diver. I've found the people at the cave dive shops to be very well informed, polite, and helpful. Some of the shops explicitly serve both OW and cave divers (e.g. Cave Country Dive Shop). The run-of-the-mill OW dive shops have been much more of a mixed bag, some excellent, some poor, and at least one I consider borderline fraudulent. Now, if a someone came up to me in the parking lot at Peacock springs wearing a single AL80, a mask with a snorkel attached, and carrying a Princeton Tec pistol-grip light, and asked me where the cave was, they might perceive my reply as unhelpful or even rude. I can imagine a similar scenario occurring in one of the area dive shops, perhaps simply due to miscommunication.
It is true that cave divers, like many proficient people, have less tolerance for those with poor technical skills, particularly since those poor skills can lead to fatalities in the cave, both for the unskilled individual and those diving with him or her. This is no different from the low tolerance a DM might have for an OW diver who crashes into the coral and wallows around on the bottom silting out the dive for the rest of the group.
The worst (and only) haranguing I ever got related to diving was from a boat captain when I surfaced 50 yards down current from the boat on an ocean dive and had a hard swim back against the current; I got back aboard and he yelled at me long and hard about how he'd never had a fatality on his boat and how I could have had a heart attack swimming back to the boat. True, a navigation error on my part, leaving me with the choice of exceeding my gas supply safety margin continuing to look for the anchor line, or coming up where there's plenty of air and doing a surface swim to the boat. I chose the latter and never went out with him again. So butt-nuggetry is not the exclusive realm of certain cave divers.
CamC
Contributor
kimbalabala
Contributor
I was on board with everything but this last bit - a little extreme. I think we all need to be able to co-exist and be supportive of one another regardless of our choice to be a cave/tech/wreck/rec diver. If I were fortunate enough to live in cave country I would expect to be treated with respect and acceptance by other divers and shops even though I'm just a plain old recreational diver. I think it's idiotic for any shop owner to pass up a sale because of what amounts to bigotry, especially in this economy. As my mom used to say, "they clearly have more dollars than sense".
If you want to dive solo or with a buddy it is your body and your decision. It's really not my business to judge that it's right, wrong, good or bad. I also don't care what your rig consists of - I know, it's shocking!! Sometimes I think it would be a good idea for all of us to be trained to dive solo even if we plan to always dive with a buddy. That would certainly improve our odds of surviving life-threatening scenarios.
kotik
Contributor
I also know Cathy fairly well, and it's hard to imagine there's not something more to that story. For one thing, she's a sweetheart, but that's not what I mean. What I also know is that she's no dummy and she has a business to run. People doing cavern diving & training use mostly open water gear, and since they're often on the verge of spending a lot of money on gear, training, lodging, fills, etc., no sane shop owner is likely to turn their back on a prospective customer just because they have aluminum tanks.
It's a small world around there, and word gets around. It could be that someone saw you somewhere you shouldn't be, or maybe one of the guys you had an unfriendly encounter with just made something up and told it around. Either way, it would change the context of the story a lot. Nobody wants to be the shop that sold 'that guy' his last tank of gas.
TONY CHANEY
Contributor
I am with Kotik on this issue. I find it hard to believe that Cathy and crew would not fill an Al tank. Heck, there are a lot of SM divers using them as well as hundreds of deco tanks.
DaleC
Contributor
Well.. you could have just looked at him curiously: "Taught? There's a course for this? I just bought all this stuff on craigslist."
Ah, good times... good times.
That is certainly un- called for. Considering back mounted cave divers are carrying nearly 150 lbs of weight on their back, being winded while transporting the cylinders back & forth is not unusual. Personally I would have thanked the person for the offer of help & trucked on, it would require much more effort to take the tanks off, then to just get them to a table or the back of the truck. Being I am also a recreational OW instructor,..... There's no way I would have said such a thing. Sometimes people,... cave divers, wreck divers, trimix divers & even your day- to- day recreational OW divers, forget where they come from,... It's human nature. Don't get me wrong, any diver regardless of level, or what they do should have pride in what they do, but don't ever forget where you came from. As many have said, you get butt holes in every walk of life.
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