I'm just back from my open water certification in Belize, and thought I'd offer my perspective on Mike Ferrara's question: How in the world does someone who doesn't have the basics down justify doing deep dives?
The answer is we don't know any better. Let me tell you about my recent experience (as in, five days ago). After completing my PADI OW training in Belize, I was anxious to dive. Due to weather conditions, local reef diving wasn't an option -- the only opportunity was a trip to the Blue Hole, a three tank trip that began with a 130' dive. Was 130' a bit risky for a diver of my experience, I asked the dive shop? Nope -- piece of cake. So I signed up, and my very first dive after open water training was to 130' in the Blue Hole. And I wasn't alone -- of the 16 other divers on the trip, nearly half were very inexperienced divers. The dive went great -- I had a fantastic time, got to see bull sharks up close and personal, and got hooked forever on diving.
A few days later, I got to see the downside. For my seventh dive, I returned to the Blue Hole with my fiancee, who had some mask difficulties during PADI OW training that delayed her completion. We went with a different, larger dive operator this time, and at least half of the 20 divers on the trip were inexperienced or occassional divers.
Bad moment #1: The dive masters for the trip put incredible pressure on divers to do the dive. My finacee had decided in advance to skip the Blue Hole (and only do the other two planned dives of the day) because she didn't want to go that deep on her first dive. Several others felt the same. Everyone who tried to opt out has a DM spend several minutes telling them that it was a piece of cake, and that they should really do the dive. Several gave in; my fiancee did not.
Bad moment #2: A very experienced couple of divers opted out of the dive when they learned that they wouldn't be allowed to do a safety stop at 50', as their experience told them their computers would instruct them to do. Hmmm... I thought. They just paid $200 US to come out here, and they are skipping the dive? What do they know that I don't?
Bad moment #3: At 130', I looked down and saw a woman quite a ways below me. Turns out she was a once-a-year vacation diver, and had very poor buoyancy control (luckily, my instructor spent over 50% of our training dives working on BC, weighting, and trim. Thanks, Ben!). She bottomed out at 150', came back up after a minute, and we continued the dive. She laughed about it at the surface, but an hour later she blew her depth again, descending to 75' for 4 minutes during a 60' planned dive. Incredibly, she decided to dive her third dive anyway (to 60') after a two hour interval. The experienced divers were begging her to skip it, but the dive masters told her it was no big deal.
Anyway, my second Blue Hole dive opened my eyes to the fact that dive operators might have a financial incentive to play down risks. And reading this board, I'm learning that PADI might have a financial incentive to get people in the water with less training than they need. And all of this will change my behavior in the future. But as a new diver at the mercy of PADI course material and the dive operators, there is really no one telling you that you might be in over your head, kiddo.
