OldNSalty
Contributor
OP, if you want a copy of the book that Wookie referenced I'll send you mine. Shoot me a PM and it's yours.
Diver etiquette
- Thread starter Gabriel Torres
- Start date
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AdivingBel
Diver
Maybe it's relative to where you're diving, but I'm a "tidy bowl" diver. I don't care about your "boot juice." If you're on a wet portion of the deck, don't break your neck climbing over other folks and their stuff to dump your "mushroom feet" over the side. Discreetly dump it low where you're sitting (not right into someone else's stuff, be considerate). It's just water. It's like people crying 'cause a rain shower blows through. For ch**st sake, you're diving, you're gonna get wet. Same goes for drysuit divers. If you're diving dry in the tropics, God bless you. I won't wring my dive skin, dump my "boot juice," or shoot the fresh water hose into your stuff (just like I would for anybody else), but you choose to bring dry stuff on a wet boat. You're on your own. 
Just be considerate of others and have fun.
Just be considerate of others and have fun.
All good stuff.
My top four.
1) I don't need your resume (diving or otherwise)in the first 5 minutes of conversation. I don't really care that you had 1,000 dives in a quarry in Hubcap Saskatoon! This is number one for a reason. I frequently get insta-buddies and 90% of the time I meet a new interesting person. The other 10% are condescending, pompous, chatty, or just plain annoying. If you have to tell me your diving experience as a way to inflate your status I glaze over pretty quickly.
Corollary--Be friendly and talk to people. Best part of the surface interval except when they have watermelon!
2) Keep your space and kit tight. Don't scatter your junk all over the boat. Space is tight enough without someone running the deck like a Tasmanian devil.
3) Keep the weights low. (bears repeating) Find the lowest horizontal surface on the deck and put your weights there. Never on the seat, or the cooler, or god forbid, the camera table.
4) STFU during the briefing. If you are not interested then fine. I am!
Bonus: To paraphrase Crash Davis on Bull Durham, This is fun g**dammit! Have fun or stay on the dock! I love being on and in the water. A crappy dive is better than a great day at the office!! Listening to Debbie Downer bitch about her mask or the fact that the water is cold or didn't like the dive site, makes me want to throw them overboard.
My top four.
1) I don't need your resume (diving or otherwise)in the first 5 minutes of conversation. I don't really care that you had 1,000 dives in a quarry in Hubcap Saskatoon! This is number one for a reason. I frequently get insta-buddies and 90% of the time I meet a new interesting person. The other 10% are condescending, pompous, chatty, or just plain annoying. If you have to tell me your diving experience as a way to inflate your status I glaze over pretty quickly.
Corollary--Be friendly and talk to people. Best part of the surface interval except when they have watermelon!
2) Keep your space and kit tight. Don't scatter your junk all over the boat. Space is tight enough without someone running the deck like a Tasmanian devil.
3) Keep the weights low. (bears repeating) Find the lowest horizontal surface on the deck and put your weights there. Never on the seat, or the cooler, or god forbid, the camera table.
4) STFU during the briefing. If you are not interested then fine. I am!
Bonus: To paraphrase Crash Davis on Bull Durham, This is fun g**dammit! Have fun or stay on the dock! I love being on and in the water. A crappy dive is better than a great day at the office!! Listening to Debbie Downer bitch about her mask or the fact that the water is cold or didn't like the dive site, makes me want to throw them overboard.
Dive boats frequently have very little room. Many new divers buy huge suitcases to bring their gear with them on a dive trip and then show up at the boat with those huge suitcases. Whatever you use to bring your gear onto the boat should come as close to disappearing as possible once the gear is out of it. Mesh bags are commonly used for this.
Speaking of, does anyone use these newfangled microfiber towels? Do they actually work (half) as well as the glossy sales brochure claims? They make a pretty small roll, should take 2/3rds off the size of my dry bag. (Yes, I always know where my towel is, even on a dive boat.)
Be unobtrusive, kind and considerate (and judging that you asked the question you probably already are).
Also, bringing a banana on a boat is like playing "neener neener I've got your nose" with Posiden. Just don't do it.
Also, bringing a banana on a boat is like playing "neener neener I've got your nose" with Posiden. Just don't do it.
fisheater
Contributor
Gabriel, sorry I am late to thread. Though I am biased, new divers can VERY MUCH benefit from two little books available on line as paperbacks or ebooks(cheap). The Scuba Snob's Guide to Diving Etiquette, and the same title, Book 2. The books are intended to be humorous, even sarcastic at times, but contain a lot of good information on how to be a polite and better diver, in and out of the water. Fair disclosure requires I tell you my wife and I wrote them.
DivemasterDennis
DivemasterDennis
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