"You should have gone with us, the DM showed us a Seahorse." My reply, "Very nice, did you see the Caribbean Reef Shark?" On every dive, I'll see things you miss and you'll see things I miss, even when we are diving together.
This was my wife and I on Roatan this last year except it was a Hammerhead. Everybody else was down the wall at about 60' or so and my wife and I were cruising just inside the top edge at about 35', nobody ( lemmings ) saw it except us.
On that note, My wife received her OW in Bonaire off a referral from the LDS, after her OW dives we hit the shore diving hard, except for Oil Slick the rule was if anybody else was there we'd go somewhere else. We logged 43 dives together in 11 days of diving and I must admit I had quite a bit of fun sharing a new past time with the wife.
Fast forward 8 months and we have now arrived in Roatan and will end up doing quite a few boat dives this time. On the first dive the DM gives a great briefing and everybody hit's the water, It was a complete cluster fook around the DM, it looked like everybody on the boat was trying to cave dive up his backside. The wife and I hung back about 50' from the circus and finished the dive. After we got back on the boat I explained to the DM that we were not used to ( and didn't really like ) the " group thing " and would he mind if the wife and I explored the lip area above the group ( keeping their bubbles in sight ) on the way out and switching with the group on the way back ( them on top and us over the lip ) I also explained that my navigation was pretty good ( MEII flight instructor ) and I was pretty sure I could find our boat anchored right off the lip on the way back and we would be back the exact same time that they were. He had no problems with it so that's how it went the rest of out two weeks, we really only saw the other divers three times a dive, getting in the water, on the change in direction and getting back on the boat. Both the wife and I liked it much better than being in the CF.
I believe part of the problem is most " resort " divers have no idea what they are doing or where they are going ( I'd say about 6 of the 14 on our boat had much of a clue ). If you have the skills and have a quick talk to the DM on your boat and can verbalize a rational and safe plan for what you would like to do they will have no problem with it, hell I bet they actually appreciate the fact that there are two less resort divers that will be crawling up his/her ass the whole dive.
26 days to Cozumel, looking forward to trying the drift CF.
