WARNING: Don't Dive with SafetyStopDivers (Green Island) or PioneerDivers (Taipei)

Easiest thing would be to ask the people involved what they have to say about it. Not fair to slam someone's business without giving them the chance to defend themselves.


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Were they banned from the forum or something? What did I miss?

 

Not that I know of.

Also, I sent them a link to give them the chance to have their say and they seem to have said nothing. To me, their silence speaks volumes.


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So, I stopped checking this thread a month ago - been busy in the real world, got to dive the Channel Islands, been a pretty good month or so.

I'm back because I was sent a private message to my email last night saying that the moderators are removing my link because the guy who filmed the video and thus has copyright on it, contacted ScubaBoard and has demanded that they stop linking to the video out of copyright violation.

Instead of contacting me, responding to this thread, or presenting any reason whatsoever to dive with SafetyStopDivers, Craig demands to remove the video evidence of how his shop operates.

This does two things -

(1) It proves that Craig is the guy in the video, and it is his shop doing this sort of thing. Gosh, that had to be an embarrassing message to send to the mods.
(2) It demonstrates that this shop refuses to own up to their practices, and instead of proactively facing the problem, they just want to hide the evidence.

Sad state of affairs folks.

 

I had dinner and a few beers with a dive buddy recently, and among other topics we chatted about a number of divers we both know.

Among the things I heard from my dive buddy are:

(1) the guy in the video is Ken, not Craig;
(2) Craig doesn't work for Ken or Safety Stop or Pioneer now, and hasn't for a while (for reasons unrelated to the video or this thread); and
(3) Craig--whose views about diver safety and marine conservation differ from those of his former boss Ken--doesn't want to dignify baseless accusations against him with a response.

 

Heh, You're pretty close! There are two divemasters leading the dive - Ken, the Taiwanese guy who is the owner, and Craig, the white dude who was running the shop.



I'm glad to hear that Craig has parted ways with Ken's shops. Kinda seems like Craig is a more responsible diver than Ken & Co. I kinda wish that instead of demanding that ScubaBoard remove the links to the videos he shot, he'd have shot me an email, phone call, message, or anything... but hey.

Hope he's doing well, and hope he finds a better shop to work for!

 

I am posting here to contradict the original complaint above that lead me to question booking with Safety Stop in Green Island. I just dove with Safety Stop in July 2018, and had a completely different experience.

The complaint above says Safety Stop mistreated the underwater wildlife and corals... I almost chose a different dive agency for that reason. But during my four dives with SS, I did NOT see any abuse of the ecosystem from Safety Stop. I did, however, see other dive companies encourage divers to touch coral and wildlife, which was extremely alarming. There were also a lot of inexperienced divers in areas where they could very easily damage coral. Luckily, it seemed this was confined to a smaller area of corals off of the shore dive, and the entire dive site was not damaged.

Still recommend Green Island, just get there quickly!