Rude Divers - a Dive Center's Perspective

Our company, St. Croix Ultimate Blue Water Divers, operates two boats with an 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. departure and want our divers to arrive at least a half hour before. Arriving late affects our departure and upsets our passengers - some folks have afternoon excursions planned and must be on time - and our crew schedule. We have an afternoon boat, and if we're delayed by late morning divers, we might not get to go to a specific location where guests want to dive.

We have had guests who arrive five minutes before departure. They still need to park, use the restroom, and get fitted for gear.

Divers have arrived five minutes after the scheduled departure - we waited for them - and then tell us they need to return their rental car down the boardwalk.

We have had guests call 10 minutes before departure to say they are not coming (usually, it's a night-before rum-induced cancellation) and expect a full refund. They can cause staffing issues because we have a divemaster for every eight guests. So, if nine have made reservations, I have added a second DM. To drop down to seven or eight stinks and causes the staff to lose money.

Once on board, other signs of rudeness appear, such as a diver who ignores the boat briefing. Our captain briefs about boat safety, entering and exiting the water, and the dive site. The DMs brief their profile for the site. For safety, we have a structured re-boarding process. One side of the island can be rougher so the boat can bounce substantially, and the ladder can fly up. The captain watches the seas, then directs the divers to board on his call. We have a colored tagline system above the hang bar. Divers are to surface, swim to the split in colors, take their fins off, hand them to DM, then pull themselves up to the lower dive deck and over to the ladder. Some divers swim directly over to the ladder with fins in hand, or worse, still taking them off and trying to climb the ladders.

We do not have a standard schedule of dive sites. The staff goal is to give the guests the best experience that day offers while maintaining a high level of safety. We have had guests get angry because we couldn't deliver the wall or a wreck, assuming we didn't want to. Not the case, as conditions dictate lots of what we do.

Even though we are not required to have dive guides in the water, our company does so as a service. When divers do not follow a DM, it sometimes means the dive ends. The DM now must leave the group to go search for them. We have strict rules that no one should surface without a DM, so now the DM has to choose to surface with the group or go look for the other divers. This isn't fair to the guests who are following the briefing.

Divers often don't seem trained enough to understand or have forgotten how to use the right words, such as NDL, DECO, and No Stop Limits. Here's a conversation:

• Guy: Why did we come up when I still had 1500 psi?
• DM: Because we were five minutes out of deco.
• Guy: Yeah, but I still had plenty of air.
• DM: But if you went past your NDL, you wouldn't.
• Guy: But this is just a recreational dive, so I wouldn't go into deco.
• DM: If you stayed another 5 minutes, you would have ...

And then there are those divers who insist on setting up their own kit .... and do it wrong. They are often the ones telling our young DMs that "I have been diving longer than you have been alive."

Many divers won't admit it has been a long, long time since they've been in the water. They are trainwrecks. Just admit it has been a while, so it doesn't take away from everyone's experience.

Oh well. Thanks for letting me tell the dive center's side of the story.

- Patti Stewart
Training Director
St. Croix Ultimate Bluewater Adventures