Are all divers friendly and respect fellow divers?

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scuba hamster

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Location
North East Cost of US
# of dives
100 - 199
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?
 
If you don't like it, stay off the cattle boats. It's not rocket science.

You'll rarely catch me on one of them, because I prefer it to be peaceful when I dive.
 
I agree with Msilvia, stay off the cattle boats and that will solve most of your problems.

What I have noticed is that most cattle-boat divers are simply clueless to everyone and everything around them. The fact that most cattle boats force thier divers to stay in a tight group makes matters even worse.

But to answer the question in the title, yes I fond that the vast majority of divers are good, friendly, helpful people.
 
Like backpackers and fly fishermen I have found divers to be courteous, honest, and friendly and I feel at home with them anywhere.
 
Any time you ask "Are all..." you can 99.999% of the time answer that with a no.

The thing I've found on resort dives is that people are simply fixated on what they are looking at, not other divers or their surroundings. Maybe not being rude on purpose, but by complete ignorance, lack of situational awareness, and no consideration of other divers in the area. Just think about how many times you've seen someone trying to take a photo crash into other people, or worse, the reef.
 
:whistling:
 
Ahh yes. That brought back memories from the one day we did the trip to the Blue Hole in Belize and were diving off of a cattle boat with around 25-30 other divers. In those situations you often get inexperienced divers who can't contorl their buoyancy and have no respect for anyone or anything else around them because honestly most of them don't know any better and don't realize what they're doing. I've never had my reg. ripped from my mouth so many times in one dive.

Dive from a smaller boat with no more than 6-8 other divers max. You'll probably have a better experience or at least the chance to get away from any rude divers.

Other than cattle boats and the few divers with egos the size of Texas I have found that most divers are friendly and respect other divers.:)
 
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Yes, I've seen all kinds of incomprehensible behavior underwater ... but please don't go punching anybody because of it. That's not going to solve anything, and takes all the fun out of your day as well as theirs.

A better approach might be to take a few moments to consider a constructive way to talk to them about their behavior, back on the boat after the dive. Most times you're dealing with good people who are acting out of either complete ignorance or are so poorly skilled that they're right on the verge of survival, and simply don't have the mental bandwidth to think about how their actions affect others.

Be constructive in your approach and your chances of getting them to consider changing their behavior will improve.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Been blessed to meet AWESOME divers. The friendliest, kindest, most opinionated bunch of people and I love them all. Unfortunately there are a-holes everywhere in life, but rarely among the divers I've met. Heard some stories though. For the inconsiderate, I roll my eyes and move on. Not worth ruining my day over.
 
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