Question about St Croix dive op practices

[jd950]

My wife and I are planning on going to St. Croix to dive sometime this spring. Never been there. I was researching dive ops and encountered a comment that one op I am considering ended the dive for all when the first person ran low on air. The comment I saw was that a relatively shallow dive ended at 37 minutes for this reason. I am not going to name the op because I have no idea if this is true or not...I wasn't there and don't want to create issues if the story is incorrect.

I am not trying to have a discussion about that topic in general, I know there are opinions about what practices are safest/best and I would rather save that for some other day, but I like to know a shop's practices before I book so I can make an informed decision. Rather than call several dive ops down there and ask them, I thought I would first see if anyone here could tell me about the dive times/practices of some of the shops down there.

Thank you for any information you can provide.

 

[They call me Tater]

I can't tell you about all the ops but I haven't run into that with N2theBlue or Sweet Bottom.

I could see it IF there were only a couple divers, but my experience was that the only dive cut short was one on the pier ( 25' depth) where there were 2 divers and a DM. When the other guy went low at about 45-50min I got out with almost 1/2 tank, but only because it would have left me solo.

My boat dives were usuall 5-6 and some got out before others but I was never dragged up unless I was last and more or less solo.

Your going to love it.

 

[morecowbells]

Was this a guided shore dive or a boat dive? Last year we did only one day of boat diving and used Cane Bay Scuba. The sea was somewhat choppy and chilly. Some divers aborted after 40 minutes or so. Everybody else was able to dive their computer and air. Diving in St. Croix isn't cheap. I am not sure of which dive op you are referring to, but I would be pi$$ed if I only had 37n minutes of dive time.

 

[They call me Tater]

Cowbells, I know that was meant for the OP but I find the diving to be reasonably priced. Boat dives on Lake Michigan or Superior are about the same as St. Croix and there are options for shore diving which are the price of a fill.
Never used Cane Bay yet so maybe I am just spoiled.

 

[t-mac]

Don't know about practices per se, but I dove with SCUBA and on one boat dive with them the guide spent half the dive wrestling someone having problems and so my RDB led the dive until the guide could catch up. They were definitely not the paternalistic sorts. Also dove at Cane Bay and they don't even put a guide in the water unless you pay for it. I'd be surprised if this were policy with any shop. The guide should be there for convenience, not safety, and so I can't see any reasonable rationale for forcing everyone to bail when the first is out of air. Never seen that in STX or anywhere else for that matter. You're going to love STX. Do the pier in Fsted. Happy diving!

 

[jd950]

It was a review I read (not here) and I have no idea if anything in was accurate or not. If I remember right, that person also complained in the review about the lack of sea life, etc., so maybe just a disgruntled customer. I don't know. On the other hand, the dive op is pretty close to the cruise ship pier and that increased my level of concern.

I have seen and even used ops that will end the entire dive when the first person runs low, so I know it happens and I have seen arguments for the practice both ways. I like to get my full dive in or at least use ops that set a reasonable time limit, like 60 minutes. A routine recreational Caribbean dive that only lasted 37 minutes would irritate me unless there was some real good reason to end it then. I was on a Cozumel dive once where some guy became nauseous and disoriented about 20 minutes into a dive. We needed to get him back to shore to get medical assistance...that short dive was understandable.

I will double check with whomever I use but its nice to check with divers who have been there.Thanks for the information.

 

[t-mac]

I've have had dive ops "encourage" 60 minute limits, but never had your experience. Agree with your assessment about perhaps someone disgruntled. FWIW, we stayed near Csted and dove mostly out of there. There's a lot of stuff on the web how STX is unsafe. That was not my experience, but I can say I was more comfortable in Csted than Fsted. Others may have views.

 

[jonhall]

Will chime in for N2theBlue which is by the Frederiksted Pier. Have always been with a small number of divers, no more than 8, if that. You walk a short distance from their shop to the boat but they cart your gear for you. They have allowed me, in the past, to use their cart to haul tanks to the pier when my dive buddies and I were diving the pier as a shore dive. If you want a guide, they will provide one.

The waters off the west coast (the pier side) are generally calmer, with very good visibility, than the north side (the 2 sides where the diving is.) You want to be sure to dive the pier not just during the day, but as a night dive. It's a good time to find frogfish and seahorses.

As to lengths of dives, it's interesting. When I first picked scuba back up, I did a total of 6 dives in 3 years (2005-2007) with Scuba Shack (which became N2theBlue by 2008) with the longest dive being 38 minutes. Since then, in my last 20 dives with N2Blue, 12 have been 60-75 minutes, but 6 of those have been the pier. The other 6 were the second of 2 tank boat dives.