Though the etiquete of asking first was the initial topic, It quickly turned into the reasonableness of the boats position, and where the line is in regards to captains authority. I think that there is a concensus that no place is secret once someone has been seen going there. " Hello welcome aboard harbor cruise's tour boat. If you look to the right you will see a dive pro boat full of divers about to dive a popular sectet dive spot. " The boats claim thier lively hood depends on secracy and yet in one posting they abuse the divers by charging for one trip and taking them to alternate destinations. It may take a thousand violations of locations security to harm a boat owner but it only takes one instance of a decietful boat operation to cut into revenues when someone pursues making the cummunity aware of the practice. Bottom line is that the operators need divers more than they need location security. If i have a choice of 2 cab companies to pick from and yellow cab says i can not have a map in the car. I am ging to use blue cab's to drive me. It is a double edged sword. Given that all operators have the same sites they go to, then the difference in operators are either the pricing or the amenities onboard. Untill one operator becomes the only boat in town, they really dont have any leverage on the passengers. Also operators know thier spots can not be secure and they most likely over charge anyway, similar to preformers raising gate charges to make up for pirated music. The point comes when the customer just doeant take it anymore and has no concern about the operators any more. Each and every confrontation leads to that conclusion. Unless there is something preticularly unique to a site,,, One site is the same as any other to a vacationer. No operator is going to respect another operators locations except through mutual bargined agreement. You dive the north side and i will dive the south side. Thge site locations are not an issue it is what you do with them, and what is done with the locations is not going to be done by the divers.