Travel diving and being led around by "divemasters"

[Leadking]

I have been diving for over 40 years and travel the world. I just returned from two weeks diving in the South Pacific with my family and came away disappointed in the way they want you to dive. Of the two diving operations I dove with, it seems they put one guy in front and another in the back and start marathon swimming. I am a hole crawler. I like to sit in one place and wait to see what happens. I move slowly and peek into all the nooks and crannies. I have found that hitting the water and swimming like hell scares the crap out of the various creatures and you only see a smattering of what's there. One operation had a tank bangers on the dive masters that I would have loved to pound up his ***. BANG,BANG,BANG shark! BANG,BANG,BANG manta! BANG,BANG,BANG humphead wrasse! BANG,BANG,BANG shark! All this banging drove me nuts. If I wanted to hear banging I'd go to a scrap-yard.
I'm introducing my grandchildren to diving and they did not seem to like the pace either. They are on their high school swim team and involved in other athletic activities, so it's about being physically fit.

So my question to posters is; Is this the way people like to dive? If so, I may have to find another activity.

 

[Tortuga68]

Feel better now?

 

[danvolker]

I have been diving for over 40 years and travel the world. I just returned from two weeks diving in the South Pacific with my family and came away dissapointed in the way they want you to dive.

When Sandra and I went to fiji a few years ago, we went with a "group" from a Florida dive club....all in the club were regular Florida divers, all had dived Palm Beach drift dives many times( where Sandra and I dive all year), so all were competent is virtually any condition imaginable in the South Pacific , Indonesia, or any other similar place. The fijian dive market caters to New Zealand alot, with plenty of new divers with poor skill...divers that are led around like cattle.
We asked them to watch how we dive, then see how we wanted to do dives, and they very quickly altered their proceedures to alow us to dive the way we wanted to. We still had use for a dive "guide" that would make sure that people in the group following would have the coolest features pointed out, meaning that you could follow general directions, and then actually hit every single pinacle that comes along...but we would dive our profiles, we would have buddy teams that would leave the group as desired, and on returning to the boat, we would get on the boat the way florida divers get on a boat, not the way lame tourists do ( where the crew has the lame and pathetic remove their bc's and fins in the water, and the crew hauls this up, then helps the pathetic up the ladders)
We get on the boat with all our gear, and don't want any part of the "normal practice"---and were clear that "we would NOT" do it this way, period.

 

[shmuggy]

This sounds awful - you have to research dive operations as much as possible before going out with one. This one sounds like a cattle boat. This isn't typical but I think it happens alot in tourist destinations where the dive shops encounter a lot of inexperienced divers and want to keep an eye on all of them. Just make sure you talk to them before you go- if they want you to dive this way- they are not shy about it- some divers would consider this a value added service.

 

[Leadking]

No!

Feel better now?

I have been on trips where I asked the divemasters to review my in water skills and turn me loose and it has always worked. Palau is a difficult place as currents can be extreme (I carry a surface marker with me.) In one location I finally got them to slow down as others onboard the boat agreed with me.

Back in the 1970's I went to Cayman on an all inclusive dive trip. After the first two days of diving, I bailed. Every Morning the captain would ask if I was going out with them and I just said no. On the third day after I said no he asked why not (it was paid for) and I said I will not dive that way. We had a discussion and he turned us loose. Next trip down we booked directly with him. Thanks Atlee Evans and the boat was the Teresa D.

The question still is; Is this the way people like to dive?

 

[Tortuga68]

OP makes more sense now you added another 150 words & a question

Answer's No

 

[DevonDiver]

@Leadking: Did you communicate your goals and preferences to the Divemaster before the dive?

 

[TSandM]

I have found that, almost without exception, guides move too fast for me. I suspect it's due to several factors. The first one is that most divers can't stop. The best they can do is swim in circles near a point certain. The second is that people don't feel as though they've gotten their money's worth, unless they cover a certain amount of ground, so the guide obliges. And the third is that people want to see the cool, big stuff, and if it isn't where you are, the guide tries to take you where it is. (I had a guide in Indonesia swim us INTO a stiff current for almost ten minutes, to look at . . . a turtle!)

We've found some solutions. One is to get a group together that's enough to merit a guide to itself. We did that in Cozumel, and had a lovely time, except for the one day they put someone else on our boat, and the guide and other customer took off like scalded cats . . . and we declined to follow them.

Another is to dive where guides are optional. On the Red Sea trip we just finished, we could have a guide if we wanted one, or do the dive by ourselves. It is not as good an option, sometimes, as talking the guide into diving the way YOU want to, because honestly, people who dive in an environment all the time are often MUCH better at spotting the cryptic, interesting critters than I am. But I would rather do without the critter-spotting than spend an hour on the "Bataan shark march".

 

[scubajo007]

We have been diving several places in south East Asia (Philippines), and we have always had one divemaster leading, only once have we had two, one in front and one as vanguard. The divemaster often shows us things we are not interested in, but the pace has always been fairly slow. It is unusual on the Philippines to allow any to dive on their own unless they are at least AOW and is familiar with the dive site.

But back to your question, the simple answer is no that is not the way we want to dive we would like to go on our own, in our own pace and focus on what we find interesting.

 

[Leadking]

Many times, but my family was part of a larger group. I was able to get the divemasters in Yap to slow down considerably, I begged them to pitch me into twenty feet of water and come back in three hours as I would be within a 100 yards of where they left me. Diving to a hundred feet and marathon swimming is, in my opinion, is used to get burn up a tank and get you back asap.

@Leadking: Did you communicate your goals and preferences to the Divemaster before the dive?