Do you have a dive sticker on your car?

[learn-scuba]

Knavey once bubbled...


Has anyone ever had something stolen from a fellow diver? There is always the possiblity that the person doing the stealing is someone who knows EXACTLY what that dive flag means. Hate to bring this up, but its probably true.

In the better than twelve years I've been diving, I have never had any gear stolen at any time with the possible exception of a dive knife while in Roatan and that could well have simply been lost. Gear laying around on picnic tables at training areas, boats and so on it typical and by-and-large I have found divers to be trustworthy. Perhaps because they respect what it costs to buy that gear... or maybe because I'm an instructor and they look at my stuff and think "that junk's way too worn out to be worth stealing" ~grin~

Seriously though... for example, this past weekend, I had a group of five students at Devil's Den -- as is standard practice we left our gear and such at the picnic tables when diving. We would be gone for an hour at a time and everything was always right where it was left when we returned. I find that to pretty much always be the case.

 

[FreeFloat]

And once I was with a group who decided to 'invade' several popular local dive spots, one after the other, as a sort of loosely organized group (we each had our own dive buddies etc, and entered and left the water as our own buddy teams, but we moved from one dive site to another at approximately the same time).

Someone left behind (I think it was) a BC and tank on one of the picnic tables after more or less everyone else had left for the next site on the list. So after making a few attempts to identify and locate the owner of the gear, one of our group stowed the 'forgotten' gear in her car and transported it to the next site. (we could do this since there weren't any non-our-group divers at this particular site at the is particular time, so we knew it had to be a group member's gear)

The member was located at the next site and was sure relieved to be spared a trip back to the last site to retrieve forgotten gear!

Divers seem to look after their own. It's hard to believe what I'm reading, about less honest divers recognizing dive stickers and using it as a reason/excuse to break into someone else's car looking for someone else's expensive toys. I guess there are less honest members in any large group of people.......

 

[learn-scuba]

We had a similar situation this past weekend... there was a group of Boy Scouts from Georgia at the Den getting certified. Sunday morning they did their final cert dive, packed up and hit the highway back home. One of them left behind a meshed bag with mask, fins, snorkel, etc. and another left behind their wallet.

We adopted the gear and wallet for the day and when no one returned to claim it, it was turned in intact to the dive shop (who assured us it would be returned to the troop and not "held" as lost and found.

I do think divers look after their own. But, no doubt, as you note there are always a few bad apples.

 

[twatto]

..but I have a car sticker on my dive gear...

 

[nativenarcosis]

Of course you have to have the standard depiction of the Lone Star State as a dive flag!

 

[DivemasterBob]

Ft license plate a dive flag..no stickers

 

[srkdvr]

Yep, it does....

Rich:mean:

 

[bluemarlin]

yes it does

 

[Potapko]

No, same reason as the rest. I don't want to tell the thieves where the gear is!

 

[String]

I certainly dont have a sticker - one reason is i hate car stickers and the other more important reason is its an open invitation to any theives that there maybe something in there worth breaking the windows to look for.

Likewise i dont carry the compressed gas warning sticker for the same reason.

I dont leave car in there to steal and people will smash their in just to look regardless.