Hi folks,
I've been lurking here for a little while and you seem like a helpful group, so I figured I'd jump in with a ridiculously long and probably boring essay about My First Recreational Dive and get some feedback
I got my Open Water certification about a month ago and went on my first real recreational dive last week. It wasn't really what I was expecting, and I wonder how normal this experience was. I'll preface this by saying that my Open Water instructor was terrific -- very methodical, communicative, safety-conscious, and environmentally responsible, so this was my mindset going in. I regret that this might come off sounding like a litany of complaints - overall, I came out still thinking that the ocean is amazing, and people are kind and mean well, and scuba can be super fun, and I can't wait to go again. But...
My dive buddy/husband and I were picked up and transported to the dive shop, which had a record that we were scheduled to dive, but had no information about the fact that we wanted to do a PADI adventure dive certification at the same time. I'd made those arrangements in advance via email with someone who, as far as I can tell, works for the main office and not for the particular location we were diving from. I'm American and this was in a country where English is the third language. They had no materials in English at the shop, so they photocopied some while we were out on our dive.
Their web site said that they included dive computers in the rental, but they weren't originally going to give us any. The DM basically said, "Just stay with me". One of the other divers (there were 5 of us, total, plus the DM) heard me saying that I wasn't comfortable with that and politely but forcefully semi-demanded computers for all of us. They handed them out - half of them were set to imperial and the others were metric (including mine). I can do enough conversion in my head to get by, so I was semi-ok with it, but if I hadn't felt so rushed I would have asked for help setting it to imperial so that I wouldn't have been trying to math and breathe and manage my buoyancy and not fall behind and not kick people on my first ocean dive.
The dive master and boat driver set up all of the equipment for us, for good or ill - I'd been taught to set up all of my own stuff so that I could check it over carefully. I did as thorough a once-over as I could with the rigged gear, which is good because my weights were on backwards and my secondary was hissing. I fixed my weights while they swapped out my regulator.
The pre-dive overview was a quick review of what we were likely to see, an explanation of how deep we would likely go, and since it was a drift dive, the main instruction was "stay with me", which seemed fine. From there, everything seemed super-rushed. Nobody did buddy checks and by the time we got in the water, the DM had already started descending - I guess I was expecting people to do weight checks and to have to signal things like "ok to descend", but everybody just kinda dropped in and started swimming.
The DM waited for us all close to the bottom and we all headed out in a clump - lots of traffic/congestion from everyone trying to stay close to the DM. Every time I'd start to feel comfortable, I'd kick someone, or they'd kick me, and I'd get concerned and start trying to get up or out of the way thinking I'd somehow lost control of my buoyancy and was kicking coral, but no, it was always a human. (This was better on the second dive of the day only because I decided the only way to get through it was to stay at the back of the group, far from the DM, which not only meant that I felt less safe but that everyone had scattered the wildlife away by the time I cruised past.) And we just kept moving - there was barely any time where I felt like I was able to actually relax and look around me; I spent almost the whole time on both dives just trying not to fall behind. What I did see was phenomenal and tantalizing and made me wish I was out there moving very slowly or not at all. I just wanted to watch everything move around me. Instead, I mostly watched a lot of fins and bubbles.
I'd gotten a BCD mount for my GoPro because I wanted to really just "set and forget", and not have to think about it during the dive. I'm really glad I did, because I noticed something while reviewing the footage... Although I was watching my dive computer on our actual ascents, I was only periodically looking at it while we swam, and I noticed several occasions when it was beeping while we were not really deliberately ascending - it was probably just semi-abrupt depth changes while staying about a meter from the ocean floor. I did not hear it beeping AT ALL in the moment, not even once, but it's very clear on the audio, probably 3 or 4 times. Aside from my general "Is this all normal?" question, I would really like to know if my interpretation here is correct. If my dive computer was beeping occasionally while we were swimming along the bottom, was that probably because we were changing depths too quickly?
I am an ex-Girl Scout and the whole "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but bubbles" thing sounds pretty good to me but the DM kept picking up critters and encouraging others to do the same. At one point, he put a sea slug on his head like a mohawk and started draping it on other people. "Here, poke the clams and watch them panic and close!" It was kind of pissing me off. Plus, one of the other customers was literally bumping along the coral on her butt for long stretches. A) That had to hurt and B) shouldn't the DM have said something to her about that? First time - ok, that was probably an accident. Second time, hey, get it together lady. 4th, 5th time? I dunno, as far as I could tell, nobody ever said boo to her about it.
Ok, dives done - everyone was super nice and enthusiastic and patient with my newbie questions and there was water and snacks and we all had fun.
We went back to the shop, where everybody rinsed gear and started packing up while those of us doing the adventure dive cert started reading the booklets and taking the tests. Everyone's copies of the booklet were missing different pages, but after some shuffling, we got as complete a copy as we could assemble... and then there were still questions on the test that weren't listed in the booklet AT ALL. Half of them were so poorly translated into English that we were relying on Latinate word roots to figure out what they meant. That was kind of fun, actually So, whatever. We all passed and they processed out certs really quickly - I think I got the confirmation email from PADI the same day. We tipped the DM appropriately, got dropped back off at our hotel, and then...
... about an hour later, I realized that my left ear was getting really sore. I did not notice it at all while ascending, or even on the ride back to the hotel. It got gradually worse until it was pretty bad but not bad enough to seek a doctor. It was much better the next morning, and completely 100% better the next day. Best I can tell, it was either a reverse block that I didn't feel in the water because of the adrenaline, or some weird short-lasting ear infection that I fought off. Probably the former.
Is this generally what I should expect from group dives? Is it normal to feel this rushed/hurried for your first few dives because you're thinking so much about everything? Is there a better way to do this, like renting gear and renting my own boat so I have control of the timing? Or hiring a DM for a private dive so I don't feel like I'm holding people up? (Sounds expensive.) I didn't want to jump right into buying all of my own gear since I can barely tell if I like scuba enough to keep going with it, but that seems like one way to help with the (minor) complications of figuring out the rental gear. That's such a big commitment, though! I would really like to have one dive where I just fall in love with the sport before I start spending thousands of dollars on it, but I don't know if that's going to happen if diving is always like this. While I really did think this was cool and had fun, I actually had a much better time kayaking to a coral reef and snorkeling at my leisure. I saw more critters and worried a whole lot less.
Comments, advice?
I've been lurking here for a little while and you seem like a helpful group, so I figured I'd jump in with a ridiculously long and probably boring essay about My First Recreational Dive and get some feedback
I got my Open Water certification about a month ago and went on my first real recreational dive last week. It wasn't really what I was expecting, and I wonder how normal this experience was. I'll preface this by saying that my Open Water instructor was terrific -- very methodical, communicative, safety-conscious, and environmentally responsible, so this was my mindset going in. I regret that this might come off sounding like a litany of complaints - overall, I came out still thinking that the ocean is amazing, and people are kind and mean well, and scuba can be super fun, and I can't wait to go again. But...
My dive buddy/husband and I were picked up and transported to the dive shop, which had a record that we were scheduled to dive, but had no information about the fact that we wanted to do a PADI adventure dive certification at the same time. I'd made those arrangements in advance via email with someone who, as far as I can tell, works for the main office and not for the particular location we were diving from. I'm American and this was in a country where English is the third language. They had no materials in English at the shop, so they photocopied some while we were out on our dive.
Their web site said that they included dive computers in the rental, but they weren't originally going to give us any. The DM basically said, "Just stay with me". One of the other divers (there were 5 of us, total, plus the DM) heard me saying that I wasn't comfortable with that and politely but forcefully semi-demanded computers for all of us. They handed them out - half of them were set to imperial and the others were metric (including mine). I can do enough conversion in my head to get by, so I was semi-ok with it, but if I hadn't felt so rushed I would have asked for help setting it to imperial so that I wouldn't have been trying to math and breathe and manage my buoyancy and not fall behind and not kick people on my first ocean dive.
The dive master and boat driver set up all of the equipment for us, for good or ill - I'd been taught to set up all of my own stuff so that I could check it over carefully. I did as thorough a once-over as I could with the rigged gear, which is good because my weights were on backwards and my secondary was hissing. I fixed my weights while they swapped out my regulator.
The pre-dive overview was a quick review of what we were likely to see, an explanation of how deep we would likely go, and since it was a drift dive, the main instruction was "stay with me", which seemed fine. From there, everything seemed super-rushed. Nobody did buddy checks and by the time we got in the water, the DM had already started descending - I guess I was expecting people to do weight checks and to have to signal things like "ok to descend", but everybody just kinda dropped in and started swimming.
The DM waited for us all close to the bottom and we all headed out in a clump - lots of traffic/congestion from everyone trying to stay close to the DM. Every time I'd start to feel comfortable, I'd kick someone, or they'd kick me, and I'd get concerned and start trying to get up or out of the way thinking I'd somehow lost control of my buoyancy and was kicking coral, but no, it was always a human. (This was better on the second dive of the day only because I decided the only way to get through it was to stay at the back of the group, far from the DM, which not only meant that I felt less safe but that everyone had scattered the wildlife away by the time I cruised past.) And we just kept moving - there was barely any time where I felt like I was able to actually relax and look around me; I spent almost the whole time on both dives just trying not to fall behind. What I did see was phenomenal and tantalizing and made me wish I was out there moving very slowly or not at all. I just wanted to watch everything move around me. Instead, I mostly watched a lot of fins and bubbles.
I'd gotten a BCD mount for my GoPro because I wanted to really just "set and forget", and not have to think about it during the dive. I'm really glad I did, because I noticed something while reviewing the footage... Although I was watching my dive computer on our actual ascents, I was only periodically looking at it while we swam, and I noticed several occasions when it was beeping while we were not really deliberately ascending - it was probably just semi-abrupt depth changes while staying about a meter from the ocean floor. I did not hear it beeping AT ALL in the moment, not even once, but it's very clear on the audio, probably 3 or 4 times. Aside from my general "Is this all normal?" question, I would really like to know if my interpretation here is correct. If my dive computer was beeping occasionally while we were swimming along the bottom, was that probably because we were changing depths too quickly?
I am an ex-Girl Scout and the whole "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but bubbles" thing sounds pretty good to me
but the DM kept picking up critters and encouraging others to do the same. At one point, he put a sea slug on his head like a mohawk and started draping it on other people. "Here, poke the clams and watch them panic and close!" It was kind of pissing me off. Plus, one of the other customers was literally bumping along the coral on her butt for long stretches. A) That had to hurt and B) shouldn't the DM have said something to her about that? First time - ok, that was probably an accident. Second time, hey, get it together lady. 4th, 5th time? I dunno, as far as I could tell, nobody ever said boo to her about it.Ok, dives done - everyone was super nice and enthusiastic and patient with my newbie questions and there was water and snacks and we all had fun.
We went back to the shop, where everybody rinsed gear and started packing up while those of us doing the adventure dive cert started reading the booklets and taking the tests. Everyone's copies of the booklet were missing different pages, but after some shuffling, we got as complete a copy as we could assemble... and then there were still questions on the test that weren't listed in the booklet AT ALL. Half of them were so poorly translated into English that we were relying on Latinate word roots to figure out what they meant. That was kind of fun, actually
So, whatever. We all passed and they processed out certs really quickly - I think I got the confirmation email from PADI the same day. We tipped the DM appropriately, got dropped back off at our hotel, and then...... about an hour later, I realized that my left ear was getting really sore. I did not notice it at all while ascending, or even on the ride back to the hotel. It got gradually worse until it was pretty bad but not bad enough to seek a doctor. It was much better the next morning, and completely 100% better the next day. Best I can tell, it was either a reverse block that I didn't feel in the water because of the adrenaline, or some weird short-lasting ear infection that I fought off. Probably the former.
Is this generally what I should expect from group dives? Is it normal to feel this rushed/hurried for your first few dives because you're thinking so much about everything? Is there a better way to do this, like renting gear and renting my own boat so I have control of the timing? Or hiring a DM for a private dive so I don't feel like I'm holding people up? (Sounds expensive.) I didn't want to jump right into buying all of my own gear since I can barely tell if I like scuba enough to keep going with it, but that seems like one way to help with the (minor) complications of figuring out the rental gear. That's such a big commitment, though! I would really like to have one dive where I just fall in love with the sport before I start spending thousands of dollars on it, but I don't know if that's going to happen if diving is always like this. While I really did think this was cool and had fun, I actually had a much better time kayaking to a coral reef and snorkeling at my leisure. I saw more critters and worried a whole lot less.
Comments, advice?
