Will Shops & Instructors like this, or hate this?

[DennisS]

This would be good for local divers that want to polish their skills but a tourist wants reefs and wrecks. They can do drills at home in the quarry, why waste a florida day doing them, unless the seas are up.

Just my 2 cents

 

[danvolker]

This would be good for local divers that want to polish their skills but a tourist wants reefs and wrecks. They can do drills at home in the quarry, why waste a florida day doing them, unless the seas are up.

Just my 2 cents

Have you ever been to the BHB? You can do a 3 hour plus dive there....you can spend 10 minutes of that seeing how you do running the course....divers will try it.

 

[fjpatrum]

This would be good for local divers that want to polish their skills but a tourist wants reefs and wrecks. They can do drills at home in the quarry, why waste a florida day doing them, unless the seas are up.

Just my 2 cents

I'd do it, just to get some "expert" insight into how my skills fare. BHB is a fantastic dive, for tourists and locals alike but I can't see doing a skills demo impacting the dive too terribly. Even in my 10th dive or whatever it was I did BHB I still had 1000 PSI on an AL80 after an hour under the water.

I'll be back again this April/May sometime and think I'd really benefit from something like this... But maybe I'm not a typical "vacation diver" type, though it seems that's how I get most of my diving right now.

 

[Thalassamania]

When I had a Diamond Reef setup down in the Keys I used to take it out on lots of my friend's dive boats. The tourists loved it, really enjoyed working with it, and I made a few bucks for the Coral Reef Alliance selling the passports and that year's participation "collectors" stamp. I think that they all left better divers than they arrived, not to mention several lbs. (of lead) lighter. The only people I had problems with where "Pros," who did little better than the tourists, but were not (unlike the tourists) in, shall we say, a teachable moment.

 

[Rogersea]

Hi Roger,
This is no where near the Keys....
It is, in it's own right, a world famous destination for macro life....People will come to Palm Beach to dive our reefs, and during the trip, most will want to do the BHB dive at least once....it is a shore dive, and free, along with being unique.
What it does have in common with the keys and most tourist destinations, is large numbers of divers with poor skills--divers that silt constantly, and who pogo along the bottom.
Shops doing Dive Travel to Palm Beach, will like a free day of diving in this unique area, and the challenge course will be great for them to video their own people in, and to later run course where trim and propulsion and bouyancy are better perfected.
This will also be big with local shops.
I made some big headway on this concept today, it is looking very good, very soon

Thanks for the geograhpy lesson .. I was unaware that it was a world famous dive destination in its own right.

Sounds like you have the "if I build it they will come business plan" . Nothing wrong with that. Good luck as you continue your marketing plan.

Cheers,
Roger

 

[Rogersea]

When I had a Diamond Reef setup down in the Keys The only people I had problems with where "Pros," who did little better than the tourists, but were not (unlike the tourists) in, shall we say, a teachable moment.

Who could argue with a self described "Polymath"

Cheers,
Roger

 

[danvolker]

Thanks for the geograhpy lesson .. I was unaware that it was a world famous dive destination in its own right.

Sounds like you have the "if I build it they will come business plan" . Nothing wrong with that. Good luck as you continue your marketing plan.

Cheers,
Roger

That's a kind of snotty comment....and shows you have no idea whatsoever, about what this area represents..... The big mover for this idea, is the sensitive environmental nature of much of the Park, and the clear "need" to get students and divers without the skill to get off of the bottom, either away from the areas they can damage, or enough help so that they will stop creating damage.
Visit Blue Heron Bridge Marine Park to see what divers look for here. Or, A Galapagos for Nudibranchs and the Teams studying it.

There are plenty of threads where I tell people they should try the diving in Palm Beach.....you could call that marketing, or you could call that sharing a great dive site, with many other people who would otherwise miss this, and know only about the destinations with million dollar plus ad budgets. In this thread, I am working on an idea to protect the area....and looking for ways to make the required fix and the costs, something the County of Palm Beach would be willing to pay for.

 

[Rogersea]

Sorry if I offended you.

Cheers
Roger

 

[danvolker]

Sorry if I offended you.

Cheers
Roger

No problem. I would actually ask you, from the look of your area, if you don't have issues with poor divers bumping in to coral...
I can tell you that when Sandra and I went to Fiji, we were shocked at the poor level of diving demonstrated by the New Zealanders, that made up much of the tourist trade there.....the Boat crew was used to having to do everything for these people other than breathe for them....underwater, they were evry bit as bad as divers we see at the BHB. Fortunately, we were with a group of long time Florida divers, most with many hundreds or thousands of dives, and they kept us separated from the novices on our own boats, from the 2nd day on

I would think with a pristine area like you are in, that you would have a desire to get divers that visit frequently, to improve their skill level..... The return "frequently" is the way that it will help us....the skills won't improve that much on the first time...thought just getting weighting perfected in first 10 minutes could be huge.