[QUOTE
In the last two years I began to hear something that was truly worrying - very experienced and worldly divers expressing the realization Palau didn't live up to the hype. Newbie divers are always wowed, and thank goodness there are a lot of them, but it was personally unnerving to hear first hand clients saying what I've quietly thought. And as all of us know in the dive business, you need to hype and sell your location....often to the point of being a bit 'delusional' to keep sales flowing.
Palau is still a great place to dive. For now.[/QUOTE]
I'm going to add a little here. I live and work in China, and I've observed and assisted with teaching Chinese divers. At least for the LDS I'm associated with, they enforce and follow standards in their training. C cards don't just walk out the door. Our course director is nails.
That said, I've done a bit of diving around Asia, several locations in the Philippines, Saipan, Sipadan, Thailand, and sorry, but the golden rule lives (if you've been living in a hut deep in the jungles of Borneo - that means HE WHO HAS THE GOLD, MAKES THE RULES).
Let's be clear, there are a % of Chinese divers who take great pride in their diving abilities, as much as the cost of their gear. But, my experience shows that those who don't move into being 'pros' tend to move from pride in their abilities, to flaunting their skills and money. Make no mistake, Chinese who can scuba dive aren't your average China native. There are basically two kinds of Chinese divers, first the people at the upper crust of a very wealthy middle class that don't have mortgages because their parents purchased their homes. They can look at their incomes as nearly 100% disposable. And second a new kind of 'nouveau riche' of China (and the modern world) who believe that their money 'entitles' them to do whatever they want, to treat people like servants in service jobs, and to demand things that otherwise might not be done. They are what some in places like the US would call 'white trash', they have money, but they lack the cultural sensibilities for using it wisely.
Point here is that they have money. Lots of it. SCUBA is an expensive hobby and most of them own some of the best dive computers, and rigs available, to say nothing of their camera gear.
So, when a Chinese tourist flashes the equivalent of $100 USD to get a turtle pulled aboard the boat, or to put a jellyfish into a ziplock, DMs that make $400 a month or less are going to take Door #1 in most cases. And that's assuming the DM was complicit, not that the Chinese diver didn't just do it by themselves.
The other problem is the 'me too' mentality among the Chinese. All it takes is one person to break a rule, get away with something, and they all seem to think they 'deserve' to do it too. An example is a recent student I worked with. She couldn't swim. Not a lick. But she still showed up for the OW course because 'her friend can't swim and she got her C-card' (this one did not). But the point is that this mentality is pervasive thru ought Chinese society. What someone else has, I need, or better yet, I need something better, or MORE so I can have 'face'.
I live here because I like working with them. But don't think for a minute that 90% of the Chinese tourists & divers care even a little about the reefs they dive and snorkel over. All you have to do is visit Sanya in China (what some call the Hawaii of China) and look at the underwater habitat that is basically non-existent. The reefs and fish are gone, this at a location that should be as biodiverse as Anilao.
So, yeah, if you are counting heads in Palau, or anywhere else in Asia, just realize that they figure they paid to be there, and they can enjoy themselves any way they like. The only people who can turn that tide are the DMs, shop owners and governments in those locations.
Hate to throw that out there, but I see what's going on, and he direction it's taking, and the places we all want to enjoy just won't be there in very many years if this keeps up.
