Travel diving and being led around by "divemasters"

[MauiScubaSteve]

I frequently "lose" the guide. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes it just happens (Because Im busy looking at something) and I couldnt care less. The guides are not the scuba police and fortunately the guides I dive with mostly know theire not.

...

As long as they give a proper brief and make a row call before the boat leave there should be no issue whatsoever with going off with your buddy.

With the operators I have worked for, if you "lost" the guide on the first dive the crew might very well not allow you to make the second dive. If you "lost" the guide on the second dive of your first or second boat trip in a package of dive trips, you might get refunded for the future trip(s), with no package discount for the trip(s) you did go on.

 

[Tigerman]

I never lose the guides on the first dive as that tend to be a checkout dive, but later in the trip its pretty silly to me for people to demand people to stay with them. If you're certified to do the dive you shouldnt be required to have anyone holding your hand.

To be expected to be at the surface after X minutes and at Y or Z location I can accept, but you shouldnt need a babysitter (Unless youre one of those hopelessly crappy divers who should redo your training)..

 

[Splitlip]

With the operators I have worked for, if you "lost" the guide on the first dive the crew might very well not allow you to make the second dive. If you "lost" the guide on the second dive of your first or second boat trip in a package of dive trips, you might get refunded for the future trip(s), with no package discount for the trip(s) you did go on.

Wow.

Thank God that is not the case in Palm Beach. Here the guide/dm serves at the pleasure of the divers. No stress for our guests. Do as you will. Our waters are warm and blue (gin clear). We recommend staying with guide, but no one wacks your pee pee if you don't.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

Leadking, I feel your pain. One of the reasons I maintain my professional credential and keep my dive pro insurance current is so that my wife/divebuddy Debbie and I don't have to race with the local DM's. We are allowed by nearly everyone to dive our own profiles. There are good divemasters and some not so good. Just like teachers and cops. It is important to let the DM know at the outset of your dive what you would like. Sometimes they comply. It is also important you let the dive concessionaire know what you did not like about you diving experience. I also suggest you join Undercurrent (undercurrent.org.) and you can post your reviews there to warn other divers off of a potential bad experience. Don't give up on diving because of a few overbearing and aggressive DM's. Consider diving on you own from shore with a buddy, or event spending a few extra bucks for a private DM. I share your view of a good dive. Stop and look and watch and enjoy the scenes beneath the sea.
DivemasterDennis

 

[adurso]

I will not dive anywhere they feel they can force me to follow anyone anywhere, nor anywhere they feel they can force me to dive any way other than the way I want.

 

[TSandM]

One of the things I like about the dive ops I use in Maui (particularly Mike Severns) is that they seem to take the measure of their divers, and run the dive accordingly. I've never had Pauline rush me through a dive at all, nor does she get perturbed if we don't stay right with her.

I started to say that I would never deliberately "lose" the dive guide without having discussed it beforehand. But we did exactly that in Cozumel. The guide had made what I thought was quite a reasonable request, that we stay where he could see us. But we didn't count on him hitting the water and taking off like a scalded cat. There were five of us, who liked poking in holes and three of whom were taking pictures, and none of us wanted to go that fast. The guide seemed oblivious to that, and when he disappeared from view in front of us, one of our party swam up with his wetnotes and a message suggesting we encourage the guide to commit profane acts upon his own person. We all agreed, stayed together as a group, and he eventually seemed to figure out what was going on, and slow down at least enough so we could see him.

Guides are people I pay to help me have a better dive. They're not people I pay to run my diving.

 

[Centrals]

I did most of my diving around SE Asia and every dive is guided. Un-guided dive is very rare unless the Dive Operator know/trust you very well.
In some places they would require the WHOLE group to surface together reqardness of how much gas you still have in your tank.
While some places will let you and your buddy to stay a bit longer.
To deliberate "losing" a dive guide would not go down very well at all.
In GBR(Queensland) as far as I can recall, dive guide is NOT provided and it is you and your buddy responsibility to get back to the boat.

 

[Pro Scuba Courses]

Be very clear from the beginning what you expect from your dive guide or ask to dive with just a buddy - you are after all a certified diver. Some divemasters don't understand their role properly. If they insist on you diving with the group, be very clear on how you like to dive and what you want to see.

 

[Kingpatzer]

I love having a well-informed, attentive local divemaster when I'm someplace new. They will give me a great briefing, I'll be able to ask questions, underwater I can point to some fish I've never seen before and get it's name, and so on. But my wife and I want to dive at our own pace.

We have never had a problem with the group being too fast for us because we start communicating with the dive op before we even book a ticket, and we don't stop till after we've gotten home. We make sure we know their policies and requirements, we make sure they know our expectations and desires. We make sure that there's no conflicts, or if there are, that we know how they will be resolved before we get in the water. Once at the place, we make sure we keep talking and refining our relationship with the op so that we ensure we're getting the value and experience we want.

It takes effort on our part, but the results have always been good. Our experience is that if the shop knows that you're into crawling the nooks and crannies and taking your time, that they will be more than happy to accommodate you - once they are also certain that your skills and abilities in the water are sufficient to allow that sort of diving.

 

[lmorin]

I've gradually developed a distaste for guided dives. I generally like a slower pace than the guide. That said, guides know where the creatures are, like the 9 seahorses we saw on one dive off Roatan. Or, where the nice sights are on dives done from a live aboard. In most cases, the guided part of the dive is has been about 40-45 min, ending under the boat where there is almost always a lot to see if you enjoy poking about.

I, too, have had a guide from hell. When several of us hired a Bonaire guide to take us to Salt Pier at night. First, he left his mask on shore and didn't realize it until we had completed the 100 yd surface swim to the end of the pier. After retrieving his mask, he told us to stick with him and return to the shore as a group after a safety stop via surface swim at the end of the dive. Well, he swam faster than we could keep up. And, being a 15 dive newbie with poor air use efficiency, I burned through my tank extra fast. I signaled to my wife that I was getting low on air and we made the decision that we could not catch the guide and, therefore, would not tell him that we were thumbing the dive. We signaled our companions that I had low air and that we were surfacing. Our "guide" found us while we were doing the safety stop and he seemed unable to understand that our dive was at an end because of air issues. He actually got mad underwater. My wife and I held our ground, completed the stop and surfaced. I had under 500 lbs in my tank, but plenty for the return surface swim. That experience really turned my wife off of night diving, unfortunately.