Sorry, Jan, but when the Captain opens the dive deck, that means you have permission to go diving, not that you must, should, need, or have to go diving. The Captain is not responsible for your skills, personal health, gear configuration, or lack thereof. The Captain's job is to get you safely to the dive site, set up the boat in a proper manner in accordance with their own internal procedures (which you may have reviewed, but probably didn't before the dive), and provide a trained staff to help you when you get in over your head, as it were. It is not the Captain's job to evaluate your diving skills, limit your diving to confined water like conditions, or evaluate your medical fitness for diving.
Conditions change out in the big ocean. Just because conditions were suitable for diving when he opened the dive deck for diving doesn't mean that conditions will remain static for the hour or so of your dive. One thing we can say about the weather, if you don't like it, just wait a minute.
If there is one thing I have learned about divers in my 20 or so years of working on liveaboards, people lose their minds when you place a camera in their hands. Responsible photographers know and take responsibility for this and do the things that they need to do to keep themselves alive when they forget to check their air, or get in a current, or fail to remove their ankle weights when the crap is hitting the fan.
When we sign up to go on a liveaboard, we put our big girl panties on and understand that we're doing diving that is more remote from help and more adventurous than walking off the rocks in Bonaire. The ocean has currents and waves and toothy fish and things that sting and lots and lots of ways to get hurt. That's why we go on liveaboards. You'd probably be a lot safer in the LDS pool, but it would be boring as hell.
I think you should write a very nice thank you note to Aggressor Fleet, to the Captain, and to the crew of the Belize Aggressor who undoubtedly saved your life at the cost of hundreds of dollars of fuel to get you to the hospital in Belize City. I also think you should apologize to your fellow divers and passengers on the Aggressor for that week for missing any dives (if they did) while they had to run you in. Last, I'd ask one of the mods to delete this entire thread because it does a gross disservice to the folks at Aggressor Fleet who work very hard to provide an adventure for divers and a chance for folks to see a part of the world that only fishermen and wealthy yachties would know if it weren't for their efforts. But hey, that's just me.
