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Totally agree, Most animals are way smarter then we allow them to be. I love sitting motionless and watching the fish come in closer and closer as they gain your trust.
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Being a DM doesn’t mean you are even a good or experienced diver, it just means you Put Another Dollar In to training :( And yes before I get flamed I was a DM on NJ boats and I stopped paying for the insurance!
My wife won’t be around suited up divers except me after her DM in OW training hit her in the head with an AL80
In Cayman we needed to pick up a DM who went down current from the dive site. He had hundreds of lake dives but this was his first ocean trip and had never dealt with current before. His student had enough sense not to follow him and stayed under the boat but he left her and couldn’t swim back.
In Bali we had DM’s from a country famous for poor dive etiquette chase the ocean sunfish and Manta’s away.
In Fiji we had an experienced diver who would see you photographing something and become a hockey player and body check you off the subject, there were 7 other photogs on board and we all just stopped pointing out subjects to her until she was down current from us :)
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Seriously that is crazy, stoopid and inexcusable ! Glad to hear I’m not alone
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Bad divers come in every flavor. I’ve been pinned to the bottom by divers that decided to follow me to see what I could find. I’ve seen DM’s & instructors with skills (lack thereof) that I would not pass in my basic OW courses. I’ve seen cave divers carelessly scootering, banging into everything, kneeling in the mud & silt, not properly running their reels, causing entanglement dangers for others. Am I a perfect diver? Heck no, I’ll admit, I’ve made mistakes, bad decisions & perhaps caused some harm,.... but I do try to learn from it & if confronted about something I have done, I am willing to look at the situation & do what is necessary to correct my ways to lessen my impact. In order to correct a problem, a diver needs to admit that there is a problem to begin with.
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Unfortunately, cestryker, it is all too common. :( Rather a black eye for the diving industry. Since you are relatively new, something I would highly recommend,... continue learning & improving your skills. Get with an excellent instructor &/ or mentor with superior skills. I make it a goal to learn something new on EVERY dive, whether it is just a simple dive on a reef, my local quarry, in a cave or on my rebreather,... I am always looking to learn new things. The day I quit learning,.... will be the day I hang up my fins for the last time (& I know superb divers with 5,000 + dives who are also still learning).
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All too common. That’s why I photo and spearfish solo when I can. People and bubbles can really wreck critters behavior. Just a fact of life on most party boats.
But, to be fair, I’ve made a lot of good long term diving buddy relationships with horrid divers in those types of situations that gained experience and at this point would be hard to replace as go to buds. Expectation management and tolerance go a long way ;)
But, your argument is super valid and needs to be heard. Hopefully it will smarten up a few peeps. I’ve had my mask and reg kicked off by photo journalist underwater when I was clearly there first setting up a shot.
PS: flailing a speargun all over the place tends to keep the smarter ones out of your way...
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tstormdiver’s recommendations are 100%. Being with someone/mentor with superior skills is a must.. You’ll be surprised at what you will learn :) Enjoy John !
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I actually learned a few years ago,.... A diver needs to dive with 3 different divers. As a beginner, you need to dive with another diver with superior skills, to learn the ropes & improve your skills. As a diver with some experience, you need to keep diving with superior divers, but also with divers of the same caliber, so you both can learn from each other. Lastly, as an experienced diver you need to dive with newer divers, mentor them & show them the ropes & your enthusiasm,.... I should go full circle. For me, it is important for me to pay it forward to the next generations of divers. That keeps our community intact.
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People like this are why I dive solo most of the time. In my first 40 years of diving I only dove with 5 people, 3 of them only once. Only in the last 5 years have started to dive with new people, most of them very new to the sport. I prefer to dive with someone new who is still interested in learning rather then some jerk with a fist full of underwater basket weaving certifications who thinks that they know it all.
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scubadee . I had sort of a similar experience at Blue Heron Bridge on a sponsored night dive. I have no idea what experience level the group was. The dive / dive master leading was awesome, but the group instantly went into a " Let me see frenzy". Not paying attention where the other divers were located, divers running into each other, silting up the bottom and such. After about 20 minutes of this I decided to hoover above the frenzy a few feet. Turned out with a light mounted on my OTS FFM as a secondary, while using a primary light, I was seeing things that the mass was missing. A lot of things. After about 40 minutes, I watched a diver shoot to the surface about the same time I got my first experience with fishing line. I untangle myself and noticed the DM leader had surfaced due to the dive flag being entangled . No one else surfaced, they all stayed fixated on the "Let me see" . I surfaced, asked the diver that shot to the top if he was OK . He ran out of air, asked if he can inflate his BCD orally , he had already. Check that the DM was OK, and escorted the OOA dive back to shore. Personally I don’t think a cert has anything to do with how people act, if they are an elitist/entitled/me me me attitude above water, really don’t think that is going to change underwater. I’ve had my AOW since 87, but just have got back into it ( basically starting over) with 15 dives since Jan 2015 ( Springs, Quarries, Ocean), so what do I know. Enjoy ..
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