I just returned from a trip to the Galapagos Islands, that included two days of diving with LDS
Sub-Aqua, located in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. My experience was, shall we say, less than satisfactory. I posted a very detailed account of my experience with them in the Near-Misses forum here:
My near-miss in the Galapagos
I posted it there because I feel there are some lessons to be learned for all divers, beyond just the Galapagos. But I also want to publicly call out the dive op for their shoddy practices and defective gear.
Full details are in that thread, but for those who don't want to read through the whole thing, here is a brief summary of some of the things that went wrong on my dives with Sub-Aqua:
On the first day (in Academy Bay):
1. Rental equipment was old and worn-out.
2. Rickety boat, burning oil and filling the boat with noxious fumes
3. Couldn't find the promised dive site (sonar broken) so took us to a lousy site with little life
4. VERY sloppy practices - giving out the wrong weight belts, slamming gear around and walking on top of it, rushing us and not giving us enough time to do proper buddy checks
5. DEFECTIVE GEAR! Once in the water, I discovered my BCD leaked and wouldn't hold air
6. Skipper not even paying attention to where the divers are...when we surfaced far from the boat, he wasn't even looking, and wouldn't move the boat closer to us.
On the second day (Gordon Rocks):
7. Brought newbie divers to a challenging, advanced site
8. Gave me DEFECTIVE BCD - again! After I insisted numerous times at the shop that I wanted different (i.e. WORKING) equipment. At this advanced site, this could have been deadly...especially if one of the newbies got it.
If you are considering diving with Sub-Aqua, I urge you to either bring your own gear, or do a full check-out dive on the gear before you agree to go outside of the bay. Also, I would discourage any new divers from diving with them at all, until they improve their practices and take SAFETY a little more seriously (e.g. allowing time for buddy checks, having someone watch for surfacing divers, etc.)
If Sub-Aqua wishes to respond to this thread, or (preferably) the other more detailed one, I'm sure there are many divers who would like to hear what they have to say. What would impress me the most would be to hear them take responsibility for their mistakes, and tell us what they are doing to ensure this never happens again.
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