Are all divers friendly and respect fellow divers?

[Jeff Toorish]

It happens quite often while diving in Caribbean, mostly on cattle boats with big mixed group of peoples. You jump in a water, start diving and let's say you see a nice swim through area worth of good photo shot or video. You stop, aim and right before you get a chance to take a picture, sudden stream of bubbles starts raising up right in front of your camera and even worse you camera gets kicked up by fellow diver trying to squeeze into this swim through area below you. Or even better – your camera is being kicked down from the above and you get fin kick in you mask by another fellow diver squeezing himself above. What the..? Can this people wait 30 sec? Do they have any respect for fellow divers and for god's sake do they even think about unsafe conditions they create? On my last dive, I even experienced horror story. Here is the guy who just taken a picture of something at the bottom and started swimming away. My wife (who is not very expririenced diver) slowly starts swimming to the same spot intrigued to see what is in there. Suddenly guy with the camera realizes that he needs another shot, turns around and swims back to the spot like his life depends on this. Obviously, he collides with my wife and poor girl immediately gets into uncontrolled ascent. Thankfully, I grabbed her and we are all fine. I was seriously condisidering punching this quy in the face but was able to control myself. Have you guys seen such selfish behavior and what the best way to handle it?

Here's a story about diver behavior.

During a recent trip, I was photographing my daughter for a story she was writing. Sammi was 13 at the time and she is a Jr. AOW diver. She is also an excellent diver. We were shooting photos in a coral chimney. Her buoyancy is pretty near perfect and the shoot was going well. We wrap things up, which took about ten minutes, and I give her the prearranged exit signal. We had a dive master with us who was the guide.

As we are making our way out of an opening at about 75 fsw, suddenly a diver drops on top of Sammi and literally sharts shaking her, essentially trying to man handle her out of the way. (She later told me she thought it was me trying to get her attention until she realized it was someone else.)

This particular chimney drops to about 140 fsw, where it opens up on a wall that goes deeper.

The idiot finally lets go of Sam and shoots to the bottom and disappears. I mean, this guy ws literally finning as fast as he could to to the bottom --clearly he wanted to make the 'deep dive' on the trip and didn't care who was in the way.

Sam was not flustered and watched the moron swim away; then she casually swam out of the chimney and we finished the dive. I wanted to go after the jerk, but obviously that was not an option.

Back on the boat, this guy who had been, shall we say, problematic during each day of diving walks over and says something about Sammi getting in his way and "she panicked." Incredibly he was indicating that he somehow saved her from her panic. (He was the guy who always had an equipment problem, couldn't find has mask as everyone was about to go in the water, had a free-flowing reg about once a dive --you know this guy, right?)

Sam looked at the idiot and said something like, "Yeah, right, I'm the one who was out of control." She then rolled her eyes and walked away. (Thirteen year olds can be lethal, you know.)

The guy looks at me and says, "she panicked." I suggested that he was mistaken, and asked exactly what he was doing dropping into a chimney at that speed when clearly there were divers in there --unless he didn't notice the bubbles coming up not to mention the very big strobes flashing off?

He mumbled something and walked away.

Now, you have to know my daughter. She made sure everyone on the boat and pretty much everyone at the resort knew about this moron's behavior. I personally don't condone that sort of thing, of course.

Sadly, there are a lot of divers who are not only inconsiderate; they have zero situational awareness and are potentially dangerous. My suggestion, come with a loaded 13 year old for self defense.

Jeff

 

[deco_martini]

Sadly, there are a lot of divers who are not only inconsiderate; they have zero situational awareness and are potentially dangerous.

That's why I recommend all 13 year olds learning to dive take a defensive diving course.

 

[k ellis]

Again unless its something at AOW level. (as many dive operations put it) I tend to want to stay with the newer divers just because they tend to pay more attention. I went diving once and people were asking me all kinds of questions and then started talking about how I did something wrong when I walked away. Funny how people dont pay attention to where your friends are and your friends hear everything huh?

So at least with the newbies they appreciate your help many veterans are way to eager to put people down. And I do agree with the above statements about how people forget they were once new too

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm amused at those complaining about inexperienced divers. We were all inexperienced divers at some point in our lives. It's the "experienced" divers you need to watch out for.

I don't think experience or lack of has anything to do with it ... it's more a matter of personality and attitude, which doesn't change a whole lot whether you have 10 dives or 1000 ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Sas]

I don't think experience or lack of has anything to do with it ... it's more a matter of personality and attitude, which doesn't change a whole lot whether you have 10 dives or 1000 ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Yea I agree. Though to be honest I have met more arrogant inexperienced divers than experienced divers - basically overinflated opinions of their own diving ability seems to be the main thing I come across. But it is hard to extrapolate to all divers just based on my experience and the population of divers I have met. n=small number and all that. There are always going to be a portion of stupid people in every area of life. Usually this is a much smaller portion than non-stupid people though but I see that it is hard for most people to take a step back and put these few bad experiences in the overall context of generally good experiences with other divers (I am guilty of this myself sometimes).

 

[fire_diver]

Toorish, you sir have WAY more control than I. I would have thrown that SOB over the rail and probably chunked a few weights at his head in the water for good measure for his actions and attitude towards my daughter.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I think letting his daughter handle it was a better plan ... she'll grow up learning how to deal with morons, which is a very useful skill for any dad to teach his daughter ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dmoore19]

I would like to thank most of you for your posts. It is good to know that newbies are not a total boil on the a*** of humanity and a total black eye to the diving public. I think most of you care about trying to help us out. Thanks. After reading some of the threads around here I was beginning to think that without BP/W and 200 dives us new comers were looked upon as scum that destroyed reefs single handedly on purpose. Could it be that the numbers are the same in general for the dive community? Could it be that most experienced divers are helpful and willing to help a less experienced diver out and would be willing to do so without posting in this forum about the terrible silting scourage us less experienced divers are? I think so! Thanks again for your insightful posts.

 

[Leejnd]

Y'know, I just wanted to mention...I think photographers are getting a bit of a bum rap in this thread. I'm no master photographer, but I have a decent enough digital underwater camera and do like to come home with some nice shots of my dives, especially when traveling. Not all photographers either a) selfishly care only about the shot, and b) don't care about other divers.

By way of example, I was in Bali not too long ago staying at a dive-focused resort, doing multiple day dives out at Menjangan Island on pangas, in groups of 6 to 8 with a DM. Each day we had different people...some of us had cameras, some didn't. Each day in the briefing, the DM would make a simple comment about ensuring that everyone gets a chance to see the cool stuff. That was clearly 'nuff said. Most of these were wall dives, so we did kinda hafta stay in a row...and when something cool was there, those of us with cameras would get however many shots we could take in a short time, then move on for the next guy to either look, or shoot.

Not once in all of my dives there did I ever see anyone with a camera hog a shot, or not care about giving the other divers a chance to see or shoot. And there were some divers who were pretty serious about their photography, way more than me with my little point-and-shoot. Even they were polite and respectful.

Maybe I just got lucky and didn't end up with any a-holes in my pangas, but I just wanted to point out that not all photographers are selfish insensitive inconsiderate oafs.

Have I always experienced that? No...and I found it interesting that earlier in this thread, someone mentioned the Blue Hole in Belize as a problem spot. I concur...I too had the panicked inexperienced diver too close to me, forcing me to, for the first (and only) time in my diving career, descend below 130fsw to avoid her thrashing fins. (I just dipped down to 138...no heart attacks please...it was the only direction I could go, and was necessary to save my a$$!) I personally don't think she should have been ALLOWED on that dive...and that's a problem with the Blue Hole. It's really an advanced dive that too many dive ops will allow anyone to go on, in too large groups without enough DMs.

Others have pointed out in this thread that we shouldn't be so hard on inexperienced divers - we were all there once. I do agree with that...with the caveat that we should be able to expect that we won't encounter inadequately-experienced divers at dive sites that are beyond their abilities. And for that, I blame the dive ops. Too many vacation-destination dive ops are willing to take ANY certified diver, regardless of their ability to handle the advanced conditions. So the next time you find yourself in an advanced site with a thrashing newb, blame the dive op. (And yes, the diver has the responsibility of not diving at sites that are beyond their abilities too...but you're paying the dive op, and I consider it their ultimate responsibility to ensure you have a safe and enjoyable dive, without subjecting you to the potential dangers of bringing newbs to dive spots beyond their abilities.)

But back to photographers...when I dive here at home (SoCal), where DM's on the boat don't go in the water and you are on your own, we always discuss our intentions in advance - those with cameras will generally pair up. But I have many times buddied up with a photog when I didn't have my camera - and in those cases, we discuss in advance the fact that my buddy plans on going very slow, taking multiple shots, and not always looking around for me. We know in advance that *I* will be following *him*, not the reverse...and we will connect visually enough times for him to know that I'm keeping up my end of the bargain. When he's stopped for a long time at a spot shooting something cool, I might bop around a bit and see what else is nearby...and he won't move on until we reconnect visually when he's done with that spot. It works...nobody's upset or unhappy. It's just a matter of advanced planning and communication.

So no more photographer-bashing please!

 

[k ellis]

Leejnd I do agree you are correct. If any of my statements seemed focused on one type of diver then I apologize for the misunderstanding. My thing in general is when you see someone for example diving to certify in a dry suit. If the diver forgets that its not exactly the best choice to wear a T-Shirt under his dry suit then he should be poliety reminded and let him decide if he wants to continue the dive that way.

This one I have personally witnessed were some tech divers were actually bashing the newbie and laughing at how stupid he was. It puts a sour taste in ones mouth to know that some of the more advanced divers treat new divers like the plague.

Now of course as I said earlier this is not limited to photographers, tech divers wreck divers nor any other category. Its just some divers in general.

This should not really come as a surprise because I have worked a lot of diffrent fields and it really is no diffrent then co workers who hired in pre 1950 and seem to think that the company or agency belongs to them.

And last but not least they remind me of a home owners association. If they lived there for even a week longer then you they are out pointing out every little thing wrong you do the whole time forgeting to maintain their own property. So to make the point clear, Diving is for fun and should be fun. I really feel people should encourage new divers and realize its not baby sitting when you dive with a new diver its mentoring and possibly your 1 or 2 tank dives with this newbie may in fact be the life time memory they treasure for ever.