Did you ever say NO

[Prostar]

My wife and I were diving on the Santa Rosa wall in Cozumel this past August. Other divers were climbing right over her to get to the swim through. I showed her how to grab them by the tank valve and put them in place but she was already disgusted with the experience. She thumbed the dive, up we went.

 

[Kim]

Yes - I've aborted dives. Once when a guide tried to take me past 40 meters, and the last dive I did a couple of weeks ago. We hit currents we really weren't prepared for and couldn't swim against to come back to our entry point. I called the dive and surfaced to see the best thing to do (we could have gone with the current and exited on another beach), as it was the surface waves and swell were running in the opposite direction to the current at depth and pushed us the right way.

I called the second dive completely as I considered the conditions too dangerous.

 

[almitywife]

ive canned dives because there were just too many "signs" telling me not to go diving

cheers

 

[3mmDiver]

Did the two minute search and surface thing...one dive out of thousands...viz was about 3 inches anyway...ha! Now, if the question is looking back what dives SHOULD I have canned and didn't, well that's a whole other story...

3mm

 

[miketsp]

..snip..

I avoid that by not making guided dives.

I still didn't do guided dives. Avoiding guided dives has nothing to do with number of dives, but everything to do with attitude and acceptance of personal responsibility.

That's a bit of a radical statement. It means you miss out on some great diving as many really good dive sites around the world are in controlled zones where dive guides are obligatory.
However just because you're with a guide doesn't mean you have to hand over your personal responsibility. On many occasions I've found myself and my wife hovering at a shallower depth than the guide because because his profile was inconsistent with our previous dive or what we wanted to do on the next one.

 

[Geoff_H]

I've said no to a dive in Truk, where the guides were encouraging me to dive the San Francisco Maru(50m to the deck) on a single tank of air. I said no when I went last year with 60 dives under my belt and no again this year with 200 logged.

The narcosis, and lack of redundant air made it an easy call for me to make. Several single-tank divers did go down without any problems but the risk/reward radio was not acceptable to me. I look back and know I could make that dive 99 times out of 100 but no regrets.

 

[Geoff_H]

Avoiding guided dives has nothing to do with number of dives, but everything to do with attitude and acceptance of personal responsibility.

There is nothing that says when you do a dive with a local DM you have to abdicate personal responsibility or dive planning.

 

[Walter]

That's a bit of a radical statement.

This is a surprise?

It means you miss out on some great diving as many really good dive sites around the world are in controlled zones where dive guides are obligatory.

Long ago, I figured out I can't possibly dive all the great dive sites of the world. My life simply isn'y long enough. Since I have to miss some, I choose to miss those that require guided dives. I dived Cozumel either before guided dives were required or before they were enforced.

However just because you're with a guide doesn't mean you have to hand over your personal responsibility. On many occasions I've found myself and my wife hovering at a shallower depth than the guide because because his profile was inconsistent with our previous dive or what we wanted to do on the next one.

You are 100% correct that being on a guided dive does not require you to give up responsibility for yourself. OTOH, most do.

 

[300bar]

Avoiding guided dives has nothing to do with number of dives, but everything to do with attitude and acceptance of personal responsibility.

So very true,but most divers still make a lot, if not most ,of their dives with a DM/guide.
And they tend to have much more dives under their belt then their cusomers do and there for some times take "risks"the customer does not realy like but still takes and there for brings him/her into danger.Because they don't say NO

 

[Scubagolf]

Guy,s you're so very right,but that's not what I mean.
Question is, did you abort a dive when a DM/guide says it's ok, and YOU didn't like it.
So did you ever go against a DM/guide.

Two years ago, I was gearing up for the first dive of an AOW class, diving from a boat in a coastal area with water temps of 54-55 degrees. I was in a neoprene drysuit provided by the instructor, after spending 10 minutes in a pool at the LDS facility the week practicing basic use of the suit. This was my first exposure to a dry suit. At the time I had never dived anywhere in my previous 50 dives where the water temperature was much below 78 degrees.

While gearing up for the first of five planned AOW dives over the weekend, the inflator button on my BC wasn't working. My instructor wanted me to disconnect the low pressure inflator hose, and make the "deep dive" using the rented neoprene drysuit for buoyancy control. I bailed on the dive, the weekend, and the instructor.