Taking GPS coordinates of a site... captain's permission?

[Gombessa]

GPS jamming, and jamming devices, are illegal in the United States. Serial offenders will face serious consequences.

Excelsior!

 

[Mike]

If you were aboard my vessel, and used a gps after I made it clear no such device was allowed, I would toss it in the ocean and you would never again board vessel. I make that clear in advance to all passengers on the few occasions when it is appropriate.

LOL.

Where I am is now your proprietary information. That's funny!

Look out, I've got the GPS coordinates... I'm going to come back and put you out of business now...

I'm guessing spending time providing great customer service and creating repeat customers is going to put a lot more money in your pocket than worrying about preventing divers from knowing where they are at on the planet.

Confucious say "“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”

Boat captains worried about somebody taking a GPS coordinate need to realize there is no cat in the room.

 

[manni-yunk]

LOL.

Where I am is now your proprietary information. That's funny!

Look out, I've got the GPS coordinates... I'm going to come back and put you out of business now...

I'm guessing spending time providing great customer service and creating repeat customers is going to put a lot more money in your pocket than worrying about preventing divers from knowing where they are at on the planet.

Confucious say "“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”

Boat captains worried about somebody taking a GPS coordinate need to realize there is no cat in the room.

Some of you guys are clearly showing your ignorance. These guys spend YEARS and tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to find wrecks. To locate and ID them so that they can take you there. These numbers are, quite literally, their competitive advantage. Some idiot gets back to the dock and shares the numbers....and the word is OUT.

You guys can agree or disagree - but I promise you that this is common on Diving and Fishing vessels worldwide. Those of you that dont agree or cant understand have not spent a lot of time on a boat. Im not talking about on a boat over a reef that everyone in the world knows about. Im talking about time on a boat that specializes in wreck diving.

Any charter vessel can run a group to the well known and published wrecks. The better charter ops have sets of numbers that only a few people, if any, have.

Do you think that you should get the recipe for every dish at your favorite restaraunt?
Should you get the playbook of your favorite team?

This is nothing new.

 

[Akimbo]

Some of you guys are clearly showing your ignorance. These guys spend YEARS and tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to find wrecks…

All that is true, but the reality is it just comes down to whining. With GPS in so many devices now you cannot base your business on keeping sites secret. I sympathize with them, but that makes it no less feudal. It only takes one person to betray the trust and the numbers are posted on the Internet. A very tough business has gotten even harder.

 

[Mike]

So what do these dive boats with secret coordinates to wrecks they only know about do when they leave port hundreds of times a year to shake the competition from following them? Must be tough to lose a tail at 6 knots and 20 miles of visibility to the horizon.

 

[Tug]

Some of you guys are clearly showing your ignorance. These guys spend YEARS and tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to find wrecks. To locate and ID them so that they can take you there. These numbers are, quite literally, their competitive advantage. Some idiot gets back to the dock and shares the numbers....and the word is OUT.

You guys can agree or disagree - but I promise you that this is common on Diving and Fishing vessels worldwide. Those of you that dont agree or cant understand have not spent a lot of time on a boat. Im not talking about on a boat over a reef that everyone in the world knows about. Im talking about time on a boat that specializes in wreck diving.

Any charter vessel can run a group to the well known and published wrecks. The better charter ops have sets of numbers that only a few people, if any, have.

Do you think that you should get the recipe for every dish at your favorite restaraunt?
Should you get the playbook of your favorite team?

This is nothing new.

Well put

So what do these dive boats with secret coordinates to wrecks they only know about do when they leave port hundreds of times a year to shake the competition from following them? Must be tough to lose a tail at 6 knots and 20 miles of visibility to the horizon.

nothing.... Up by me most of the dive charters are the only charter at their marina. As for 20 miles of visibility to the horizon? I'd love to see that one day

 

[Mike]

Great, so pick a number that you're comfortable with and let's insert it in the question. Would you like to use 10 miles, 5, 2, you pick it.

If these coordinates are so valuable and "proprietary" there must be an immense amount of on going competition to follow them to these sites and reap the tremendous value of the locations.

If anybody builds an entire business around a 'secret' location that is fully visible from miles around and they visit it repeatedly, LOL, obviously them there are some smart cookies. Then their scheme to protect it's secret location is to try to stop someone from recording the location on a piece of technology that they could put in their pocket and push a button to record it, go to the head and privately record it or any other manner... that's a smart business plan right there.

The closest thing I would associate this with would be a gold claim. That would be a great method of protecting a gold mine -- have no legal rights to it, and take people to visit it on a daily basis. Might be smarter to file a claim and file the paperwork on these dives sites... oh, yeah, duh! You can't do that. So the business plan is to throw a GPS over board.

 

[Svidas]

I would not obtain a GPS without permission, but if a dive boat operator took any of my equipment and tossed it overboard they would pay for it or get sued. If they wanted to wipe a coordinate we could talk about it over a beer.

 

[vladimir]

Some of you guys are clearly showing your ignorance. These guys spend YEARS and tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to find wrecks. To locate and ID them so that they can take you there. These numbers are, quite literally, their competitive advantage. Some idiot gets back to the dock and shares the numbers....and the word is OUT.

You guys can agree or disagree - but I promise you that this is common on Diving and Fishing vessels worldwide. Those of you that dont agree or cant understand have not spent a lot of time on a boat. Im not talking about on a boat over a reef that everyone in the world knows about. Im talking about time on a boat that specializes in wreck diving.

Any charter vessel can run a group to the well known and published wrecks. The better charter ops have sets of numbers that only a few people, if any, have.

Do you think that you should get the recipe for every dish at your favorite restaraunt?
Should you get the playbook of your favorite team?

This is nothing new.

I will happily concede my ignorance of the economics of the dive charter industry. Help me out with the arithmetic behind that investment decision: invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in finding a wreck so you can take charter customers out at, say, $100-a-pop? So all you have to do is attract an extra 2,000 customers (at least, and neglecting carry) to break even?! Sounds like a tough business.

All that is true, but the reality is it just comes down to whining. With GPS in so many devices now you cannot base your business on keeping sites secret. I sympathize with them, but that makes it no less feudal. It only takes one person to betray the trust and the numbers are posted on the Internet. A very tough business has gotten even harder.

In feudal times they had no GPS. Now it is futile to resist the technology's influence.

 

[TMHeimer]

I don't have many of these here modern doohickeys, but am curious--- If GPS is on one's smart phone would it not be possible to record a location without anyone seeing or knowing you did it? It might be hard if you must keep the phone in your dry bag away from where you may be sitting geared up at the site. Not suggesting anyone do this, just curious.