I appreciate all the good feedback on tipping and $5 a tank seems like a good starting point. Whom would you hand the tip too. I saw someone said the captain and in front of the crew but I'm just curious what others do. Thanks again!
On most boats you can hand the tip to any crew member and it will be pooled and divided equally among the entire crew. Don't worry about ensuring that "everyone sees" that you gave the money to Chuck or Dave, or whatever. On most boats the crew is pretty tight; no one's gonna stiff their buddies out of a couple of bucks. The captain is usually/frequently the owner of the boat; if not they are usually paid, so don't participate in the pooled tips.
An exception to the pooled tip approach is if you've hired a DM or guide to specifically dive with you. Tipping there is usually at your discretion, and if you've paid specifically for them...they are probably getting their cut, if not all of that.
If you want to give someone something specific/extra for themselves, be sure to do that AFTER handing them or someone else the tip that will be pooled. If you handed me a couple bucks and said "this is specifically for you" I'd still pool it with the rest of the money - especially if you hadn't given anything for the crew overall. Mostly because, even if I did provide some sort of "above and beyond" service, I was only able to do so because there were other crew members doing their part elsewhere. Also, I'd have a tough time convincing my fellow crew members that the money you gave me was "specifically for me."
The only times I've ever accepted anything specificaly "for me" were a few occasions where passengers had some kind of "total system failure" gear problem that would have prevented them from diving altogether. One guy's rebreather fizzled out two minutes into dive #1, another guy hadn't noticed a slow leak in a tank valve resulting in a set of doubles with 500psi when we got to the site, and a couple other similar situations. (I've also found that a crew member with two sets of overfilled double 119's and a transfill whip tends to make a lot of friends with passengers that may have gone a little long on their first dive.) In those occasions I've offered passengers my rig/tanks/gas, etc, forgoing my own dives. Most accept the offer, after some persuasion. "Oh I couldn't, you'll miss your dives, " they'll protest. But usually when I remind them that they paid $125 to get up at 4am, drive to the boat, and get bounced around for 30mi to dive the Resor or whatever...and I didn't pay anything for the privilege, they come around! In all of those cases the passengers were kind enough to slip me a little something extra on top of their pooled crew tip "to cover tank fills" or whatever which I gratefully accepted. Though, if I recall...I always used it to buy the first round after we finished cleaning the boat.
