It’s interesting, back in September we were in Hawaii and ended up on a dive with four incredible divers. I had never seen anyone with such incredible bouyancy, and in surge no less. That dive, we probably didn’t move off of a ten meter radius area. It was unusual to me, and slightly uncomfortable, because I was having a hard time with bouyancy in the surge, and I was uncomfortable getting as close to the ground as they were. (My trim was off a bit, and I wasn’t nearly horizontal enough.) On the surface, I asked, and these diving gods gave me some good advice, and the next dive I was in heaven, seeing the reef up close in a way I never had before. Those two dives changed me and changed my style of diving. We actually had two DM’s, one was a bit of a tag along, so anyone could stay in one spot as long as they wanted. (And we all did.)
This experience made Bonaire a whole new world for me, and it made our later boat dives in Maui a big nuisance for me. The DM would hop from one coral head to the next, or the start of a reef to the next with zero time for exploration. We had a couple of new divers in the group, so I sort of understood, but still, it was annoying. Our own shore diving in Maui was incredible, though, along with our diving in Bonaire. I swear, at Andrea I and II, if there hadn’t been a current, I’m not sure we would have moved at all, there is so much to explore!
So, in the Similan Islands, there were three of us. My husband, myself, and another experienced diver. (He had ten more dives, actually.) He was definitely a different style diver, though. He did not like to get up close to the reef and inspect all the nooks and crannies. Probably, like us not so long ago, it was a confidence thing. I ended up feeling like 16/18 of the dives were incredibly rushed, and I felt like I was just peeking my head in a hole in passing. I barely got to explore. Is it unfair in that situation for me to request a slow down? A BIG slow down? I felt torn, like I would be making the dives boring for him if I did so. Some of the dives I understood it, because we were all going through air at a surprising rate, and we were very deep in some areas, so time was very limited there. Our interpretation of the situation was this: if the DM knew of something specific he wanted to show us, he’d haul ass between each of those things. There were a couple of dives where we just got to explore, though, and they were glorious. The currents were tough enough, and we were moving fast enough where we were over exerting on most of the dives, though. I can deal with current if I can just hunker down and breath calmly and get lost in the hunt for macros. I cannot deal with a current if I have to swim into it, and due to the green monster hitting us on just about every dive, there was a significant portion where we were either swimming into it, or acting like pin balls, bouncing through the boulders. My husband and I did get caught in a rip current once, in the Bahamas, on a sail boat, off a bay where there was only one other boat, which by the grace of God, happened to dinghy past us as we were about to be swept out to sea. We were snorkeling, and a storm front rolled in seemingly instantaneously right as we were at the opening of the bay. We were kicking as hard as we could, and getting nowhere. When I feel that feeling, now, I get panicked. I felt that feeling a lot on this trip.
Anyways, all this to say: is it selfish to insist on my style of diving and hope that maybe, like us, the other diver will learn from it? If we hadn’t been pushed out of our comfort zone in Hawaii with those slow, methodical divers, we would have never learned to slow down and we may not have spotted some of the amazing things we now have spotted. A pair of Black Brotulas in Bonaire... THREE Bar Tail Moray Eels in the Similans, an eel the divemaster said he’s never spotted in his three years there. Two nudibranches he’d also never seen, and the cherry on top: a Tapestry Shrimp: which is said to be endemic to Myanmar!
Thoughts?
This experience made Bonaire a whole new world for me, and it made our later boat dives in Maui a big nuisance for me. The DM would hop from one coral head to the next, or the start of a reef to the next with zero time for exploration. We had a couple of new divers in the group, so I sort of understood, but still, it was annoying. Our own shore diving in Maui was incredible, though, along with our diving in Bonaire. I swear, at Andrea I and II, if there hadn’t been a current, I’m not sure we would have moved at all, there is so much to explore!
So, in the Similan Islands, there were three of us. My husband, myself, and another experienced diver. (He had ten more dives, actually.) He was definitely a different style diver, though. He did not like to get up close to the reef and inspect all the nooks and crannies. Probably, like us not so long ago, it was a confidence thing. I ended up feeling like 16/18 of the dives were incredibly rushed, and I felt like I was just peeking my head in a hole in passing. I barely got to explore. Is it unfair in that situation for me to request a slow down? A BIG slow down? I felt torn, like I would be making the dives boring for him if I did so. Some of the dives I understood it, because we were all going through air at a surprising rate, and we were very deep in some areas, so time was very limited there. Our interpretation of the situation was this: if the DM knew of something specific he wanted to show us, he’d haul ass between each of those things. There were a couple of dives where we just got to explore, though, and they were glorious. The currents were tough enough, and we were moving fast enough where we were over exerting on most of the dives, though. I can deal with current if I can just hunker down and breath calmly and get lost in the hunt for macros. I cannot deal with a current if I have to swim into it, and due to the green monster hitting us on just about every dive, there was a significant portion where we were either swimming into it, or acting like pin balls, bouncing through the boulders. My husband and I did get caught in a rip current once, in the Bahamas, on a sail boat, off a bay where there was only one other boat, which by the grace of God, happened to dinghy past us as we were about to be swept out to sea. We were snorkeling, and a storm front rolled in seemingly instantaneously right as we were at the opening of the bay. We were kicking as hard as we could, and getting nowhere. When I feel that feeling, now, I get panicked. I felt that feeling a lot on this trip.
Anyways, all this to say: is it selfish to insist on my style of diving and hope that maybe, like us, the other diver will learn from it? If we hadn’t been pushed out of our comfort zone in Hawaii with those slow, methodical divers, we would have never learned to slow down and we may not have spotted some of the amazing things we now have spotted. A pair of Black Brotulas in Bonaire... THREE Bar Tail Moray Eels in the Similans, an eel the divemaster said he’s never spotted in his three years there. Two nudibranches he’d also never seen, and the cherry on top: a Tapestry Shrimp: which is said to be endemic to Myanmar!
Thoughts?