Recent dive with Sand Dollar
The "dive briefing" for the first dive consisted of one of the DMs explaining repeatedly that the dive was 70' maximum and that exceeding that would mean that you sat out the next dive, along with the various rules about not touching anything, and an explanation of the DM sending up an SMB at the end of the dive. The other important point was to signal when we hit 1000PSI. So far, so good. Nothing about the actual dive or the dive site, though. Several divers mentioned that they would be unable to equalize quickly and were assured by the DM that this was no problem, and they should just descend as fast as they could and stay above the DM if necessary.
The dives were all calculated as a square profile with tables, even though everybody appeared to have a computer.
No mention was made that most the stuff above 70' was in terrible shape, or that the current was ripping, or that it varies in strength and sometimes direction by depth, and that given the current, "staying above the DM" would be more of a random occurrence than an intentional choice.
We all splashed in and the DM said "follow me" and immediately descended, moving off towards the wall, leaving his pod of divers who had not descended as quickly, in the distance. He repeatedly signalled for the divers to catch up, but there was little chance of doing that given the current. My buddy and I were fining our butts off trying to catch up, then after a significant amount of wasted effort, signalled "you're #1" to the DM, and decided he could wait for us or not, but that we were done chasing. The DM slowed up and waited for the group.
We then flew over a beat-up section of the top of the wall with little live coral and not many fish. He would frequently bang on his tank and point at something off in the distance, which was amazingly annoying, since I associate tank banging as a problem signal. After about a half hour we surfaced for pickup, although I don't know if someone was low on air or the DM just decided to end the dive.
The next dive was a shallow reef (Paradise), and was quite nice although also very short (maybe 40 minutes). I came back with more than half a tank.
Given the reef, water conditions and variations in diver skills, I have no idea what the purpose of the first dive was, other than to quickly burn off a tank in an area that couldn't be damaged. The second dive should have been much longer and appears to have been cut short for the convenience of the company or staff. Given the conditions, both dives should have been @ Paradise or somewhere similar.
I don't consider any of this to be "an incident" just an annoyance; however I can also see where the combination of random diver qualifications, DM impatience and poor dive site selection on the part of dive operators can easily contribute to an increased rate of medical problems and "lost" divers. It wouldn't have surprised me in the least to find that someone had a heart-attack while trying to catch up to the DM, or that someone would run out of air and/or panic given the stress of the situation.
