Aqua Dives is below par

[vyin01]

Well, this is my first post and I feel bad for it being a little negative but here goes:
My friends and I did a trip to San Pedro, Ambergris Caye in Belize. We stayed at Casa Caracol which is owned by a guy named Phil who was very helpful with everything. We went through Aqua Dives because they had a PADI 5-star rating and, well, they were cheaper than the rest.
Their services were slightly lacking: one instructor left us to do our safety stop by ourselves (we are not beginners so we did the stop just fine). another instructor told us not to touch anything yet wrangled a nurse shark and a sting ray so that the group could take pics and pet them. all instructors swam sooooo slow (I understand it's supposed to be slow and calm but, c'mon, my 90-year old grandmother could swim faster than that!). Last but not least, on our last day of diving we went to Turneffe Atolle and, I swear, instead of doing 3 different dive sites, they brought us to the same dive site 3 times!!
All in all, they were not terrible but I definitely feel like safety was not at the top of their priority list and the instructors didn't seem remotely interested in showing us all there was to see.
I rate them a C- and suggest you listen to the others and go with Ecologic or Amigos del Mar.

 

[Doc]

Ahh, first posts, the smell of it.™

But before I ignore your post, let me ask. You keep mentioning "the instructors". You were with them taking courses... they were your instructors?

Or in your diving experience and broad base of comparison, do you just call any dive guide an "instructor"... instead of "dive master".

I understand that Ecologic and Amigos run fine operations, but what basis for comparison do you have in your breadth of experience? I am sure that either of these two operations will explain to you that the best way to see any of the cool stuff in Belize is to go very, very slowly. In that you didn't dive with them, might they not be equally ________ ? (fill in the blank)

Nice first post™ , by the way.

 

[peterbj7]

I don't have any allegiance to any operator, though I did to my own when I was running it! A few points on your post, though.

Why would you expect an "instructor" (by which I presume you mean a dive guide) to remain with you for your safety stop? You were a buddy pair and (presumably) certified divers. Dive guides here specifically do NOT instruct unless that relationship has been formally established ahead of time, nor do they anywhere else (for potential liability reasons if for no other reason).

A guide may well tell you not to touch anything then go ahead and touch things himself. Whether or not you approve of guides touching creatures (some approve, some strongly disapprove) it is sound practice not to allow inexperienced guests to touch as they don't know what's safe and what isn't. I bet your guide didn't touch any coral.

I sometimes dive in virtually the same spot for most of a dive, letting the creatures come to me. As you gain experience you will find this works best. It is no criticism of a guide to say that he moved very slowly - I would criticize a guide who didn't do that.

And lastly, the dives at the southern tip of Turneffe are indeed very similar. I have actually done the same dive three times in a row, as you suspect you did, and saw so much more than I would have done on a single dive. I have known an advanced instructor (with over 15000 dives) to spend 10 days just diving the same site over and over again. It is again no valid criticism to say that a guide did this.

You sum up by saying that they weren't particularly safety orientated. This doesn't come from what you said earlier, so was there something else you haven't told us?

Not pointing out things can be a valid criticism, but I will confess I'm not the best at that myself. Divers often point things out to me instead! But I wonder who your AquaDives guides were, as the ones I've dived with over the years have always been very good at that, as indeed are most guides here.

I'm glad you posted and I hope you'll continue, but I do think the heading of your thread is rather unfair. You do have very few dives and are learning (I hope) and aren't well placed to comment on guides who probably have thousands of dives each, and have guided hundreds of guests.

 

[Thatch Caye Belize]

I would have to generally agree with Peter and the poster before him about the case. Reading the title of the thread I had expected something outrageous but, like the others, it sounded pretty normal to me. If you are certified, you should know how to keep your buoyancy for a safety stop and should have no need of an instructor to baby sit you for it, although many divemasters will do so since they want to end the dive together and be picked up by the boat at the same time when they come up with you. And about the instructor or divemaster moving slowly, once again, that sounds like a virtue. Speed does not equal more or better diving. Perhaps if you had taken the time to get a little bit more Zen with your underwater environment and watched all of the beautiful smaller fish and organisms, you would be a much more contented diver. It is not every day that you will see big stuff just by moving faster and you set yourself up for a lot of disappointment if that is all you want all of the time. Diving is not a race and often the beauty of a coral reef lies in its smaller denizens.

As for Turneffe, people commonly dive the Elbow there and if you look on a dive map, there are over six named dive sites on the Elbow all right near each other. Some start a little to the east, some are on the tip, and some are on the west side. There are actually differences among them and probably that is where you went. But even if you did dive almost exactly the same dive three times, it is not like the reef is static. Turtles, large schools of fish, sharks, groupers, and many other reef organisms will pass by an area and keep right on going. You may see them on one dive at exactly the same spot that you see something totally different on the next one.

All I can figure is that you had different expectations and that Aqua Dives did not fulfill them. What that tells me is that you should have chosen a much smaller dive company that would give you much more personal service and respond much more directly to any criticism or suggestions on your part and you probably should have expected to pay more for the better, more personal service. Aqua Dives is a big operation with lots of divers and it would be very difficult for them to give the kind of personalized attention that you wanted or needed. They did nothing outrageous but they just did not live up to what you wanted. Leave it at that.

 

[Damselfish]

agreed - I don't see anything wrong or any safety issues in what you describe. (Unless something different eventually comes out of this thread, perhaps you will wind up agreeing and change a misleading thread title.) I think as a new diver you're just unfamiliar with the ways things normally work and have inappropriate expectations.

To choose a dive op you'll be happy with, you need to figure out what is important to you, then find out who meets your needs best. This is hard when you're new, you just don't know what to expect or ask yet, but you'll learn. You'll also learn there is more than one "right" way to do things - things are done differently in different places or even by different ops in the same place, usually for good reasons.

Note that while there is nothing wrong with using a PADI 5 Star shop, it's not a rating that means anything to you. It's basically just a designation PADI gives to shops that teach only PADI classes and meet some other criteria that have nothing to do with quality. Also, choosing cheaper isn't usually a way to get better, in dive ops or anything else. Now, probably nothing wrong with the cheaper dive op. But if you're looking for fewer people, more attention, or anything that costs money, picking the cheapest generally isn't the way to find it.

 

[Web Monkey]

Casa Caracol which is owned by a guy named Phil who was very helpful with everything. We went through Aqua Dives because they had a PADI 5-star rating and, well, they were cheaper than the rest.

There are no 1, 2, 3 or 4 star PADI shops. If a shop has any stars, it has 5. PADI does this as a marketing ploy and it works perfectly pretty much every time.

The "5-Star" dive shop is the finest bit of slight of hand since the invention of "3-Card Monte"

All in all, they were not terrible but I definitely feel like safety was not at the top of their priority list

Regardless of what anybody says, safety in the water is your responsibility, not theirs. If you don't beleive me, check out: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ba...dying-cayman-9-last-year-4-year-new-post.html

Terry

 

[Ayisha]

I also see no safety issues in the OP's post and think the title and slant of the post is unfair based on the reasoning. Certified divers can and should be able to be "left" with their buddy at any point in a dive, or they should not be on that dive. I would be thrilled if a DM went slow and allowed people to really observe the reef and life around it. That slow, relaxed pace is usually the sign of an experienced, comfortable DM, and would be especially appreciated by photographers.

I have been diving with Aqua Dives and had no issues with the DM's at all. I found them very observant of me and the other divers on the boat, and they pointed out tonnes of life to us. I saw them stay close to divers they were not confident in and checked their air periodically while giving "stronger" divers free reign. They specified depth limits on various dives. When we went to the Blue Hole, they stressed that no one was to go below 130 feet and they were checking diver's air here and there, did it as a multi-level dive, and recommended an extended safety stop. They did safer multi-level dives throughout our dives, rather than square profiles. We always surfaced to the boat. These are things that I would consider examples of how they do pay attention to safety and better diving practices.

I find it difficult to understand how you can recommend other dive shops in the area that you haven't tried. It is a very odd first post, indeed.

 

[Gussy]

He said he went with the "cheapest".

 

[peterbj7]

I'm actually rather disappointed the OP hasn't come back here, and I still hope he will. Maybe now he's read the responses to his post and had time to reflect he'll be prepared to moderate his original statement. I still think that the title, which will remain here unless he amends it, is unfair, and reflects more on the poster than the subject dive center.

 

[letterboy]

OP hasn't logged into SB since:

Last Activity: May 12th, 2009 04:33 PM