Biggest Pet Peeve?

[Amphibious]

So, what is you biggest pet peve in Scuba?

mine is Dangling Gauges/octopus. HATE IT. drives me nuts. such a simple thing and looks sooooo unprofessional. it's an entaglement hazzard and destructive to the coral.

first day my students get the "a dangling hose will cost you an after lesson beer" speach they learn quickly :friday

 

[Jon]

Mine is running out of air.

I never done it, never even ran low, so I can stand it when divers, especially instructors, run out of air on a dive- no excuse for it.

Jon

 

[Amphibious]

Oooo another good one!

 

[Bill McIntyre]

Mine is running out of air.

I never done it, never even ran low, so I can stand it when divers, especially instructors, run out of air on a dive- no excuse for it.

Jon

Wow! I guess I was a renegade. I am strictly a freediver now, but I used to purposely run out of air all the time if I was busy doing something that I didn't want to cut short- maybe looking for one more rock scallop or that last abalone to make a limit. Of course I'd be keeping watch on the pressure gage so it was no surprise, but the regulator getting hard to pull was simply a signal to go up.

I started doing that when I got my first tank in 1954 and continued until my last scuba diving in 1992, and it worked for me all that time.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

PS: for several years after I started, submersible pressure gages didn't exist, so the way you knew you were out of air was that it got hard to breath.

I guess people coming from an era with all these doo-dads have a different perspective, but most of us survived with that primitive gear.

 

[omega3]

Fortunately none really...the odd moral highground bystander can be tiresome though.

I solved the unwieldy octopus problem by not having one. Just a DV and BC inflation. Mainly stopped using drysuits so thats another whip out the way. If I was going deeper I would fit a contents/depth guage I just keep within my limits NDL.

With students I can see that is probably not an option....unlucky!

 

[Jon]

Bill,

I bet you weren't doing that on a wreck in 200' of water with substantial deco to complete? :head

I've only been diving for 25 years so I've laways had a SPG on my rig- not always a BC, octopus, or LP inflator, but always an SPG. Running out of air has never been an issue since I've always used less than my dive buddies and I actually look at it when I dive.

Jon

 

[Bill McIntyre]

Bill,

I bet you weren't doing that on a wreck in 200' of water with substantial deco to complete? :head

Well no, I wasn't. Nitrox was just appearing about the time I quit scuba diving, so I was never at 200 feet on compressed air. I was also careful to avoid deco in almost all cases.

Running out of air has never been an issue since I've always used less than my dive buddies and I actually look at it when I dive.

I guess I'm really into true confessions here, but while I always used less than my dive buddies too, it didn't really matter since I would just wave goodbye to them as they left and continue until I ran out.

And that was just when I had a buddy. Much of my diving was alone, and I have found that to be pretty typical of spearfishermen. No one wants to be the guy following dutifully in trail while the other guy gets the fish, so even though we all went out in the same boat, we would all go our separate ways. After my son got certified at age 12, I took his instructor out to San Clemente Island, and I noticed that he went his own way too.

But I really can't use spearfishing as an excuse. During a 13-month Marine Corps tour on Okinawa, I didn't even carry a gun and was just taking photographs and collecting shells, but many dives were alone. I just like the feeling of doing my own thing at my own pace rather than swimming around watching other people.

Maybe my best excuse for all this non-standard behaviour is that there were no certification courses that I was aware of in 1954. I had already been freediving for a couple of years, shooting big fish, so I was comfortable in the environment, and the tank and regulator came with a short instruction manual that warned you not to hold your breath on ascent. My first scuba dive was when I jumped over the side of my father's charter boat in 20 feet of water with a speargun in my hand. I hit bottom, noted how neat it felt not to have to go up for air, and then took off after the large redfish I saw. I never had any formal training until I went through a month-long night and day US Navy scuba course, and by then I was set in my ways.

 

[omega3]

Tables eh????
I have a set of Russian tables for air diving to 80 meters from the 70`s (if they havn`t been thrown out) and there is no deco penalty longer than 12 hours for unlimited bottom time!!!!!! amazing!!!!

 

[jimdoe2you]

I was a student instructor in college (University of Florida Academic Diving Program) and I would get very, very, very, very fine girls in bikinis in my classes. The pool sessions became very distracting when I would have them form a semi-circle on their knees in the deep end.

All I can say is, "It was hard!"

Jim

 

[island_sands]

People with no buoyancy, grabbing and standing on corals :vangry
Running out of air (good one Jon)
Danglies (octopus )
Pink masks and bright yellow wetsuits

 

[porsc]

i guess i can stand all of those things, as long as they are innocent mistakes, and the divers are willing to accept instruction on how not to create the same mistake again.
my pet peeve is when divers do ignorant things on purpose, just because they don't care. showing little to no repect for the corals or pelagics, doing things that could put the rest of the group at risk, or just general poor habits that are high risk for others possibly having to step in and help them.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

I can understand how you can disrespect corals, but how do you disrespect pelagics. Give them the finger as they swim by?

 

[Amphibious]

I can understand how you can disrespect corals, but how do you disrespect pelagics. Give them the finger as they swim by?

I do that all time as the best ones usually swim by when I'm gun-less :naughty

 

[BatRay]

I hate when the BC is a wraparound kind that puts pressure on my ribs and makes me feel like I'm suffocating.
It also isn't fun that you can't look around as much on scuba because all the stuff restricts movement.
Oh yeah, and the cost of gear!.

 

[porsc]

i'll spell it out for you... fish such as frogfish, stonefish, rockfish, hawkfish, etc. who like to settle down onto a place are harassed by divers who poke, prod, use regs to blow bubbles at them, fan sand at them with their fins... just so they can see them move.
i've seen divers harass angelfish and several other bigger pelagics by chasing them all over the reef. the goal is to blend in with nature as much as possible. i hope that clears things up for you.

 

[Yidaki]

not during the dive but on the boat when u r getting ready to dive, noticing blown o-ring and if anybody doesn't have SPARE one..Totally, bummer...

 

[island_sands]

i'll spell it out for you... fish such as frogfish, stonefish, rockfish, hawkfish, etc. who like to settle down onto a place are harassed by divers who poke, prod, use regs to blow bubbles at them, fan sand at them with their fins... just so they can see them move.
i've seen divers harass angelfish and several other bigger pelagics by chasing them all over the reef. the goal is to blend in with nature as much as possible. i hope that clears things up for you.

I am with you on that one. Leave the marine life alone... some Maldivians used to ride mantas while snorkelling, it really used to infuriate me. Their attitude, they are our mantas...

In retrospect though, if you think about it, the islanders who live on small islands have the water as their "savannah" or playground - the same way as we have domestic pets, I guess the marine life is the same for them. i know people that take turtle eggs every year, hatch them at home and release them (or eat them), have leopard sharks in a man-made pond on the island, keep stone fish and frog fish in baskets in the lagoons and go out and feed them daily.

Perhaps it's similar behaviour like we did when we were kids, catching frogs, snakes, rats, - i mean hell - my parents' neighbours have 15 blesbok in their garden rofl

All relative really

 

[porsc]

however, there is a difference b/t natives who only know what they have grown up with in their environments, and divers who have been certified, educated and exposed to all of the media of reef conservation.
as i said earlier, it's hard for me to get upset with people making a general mistake out of ignorants. but when an educated person performs these acts out of complete apathy, then that is another story.

 

[maguro]

this is a response to the running out of air, i spent several years as an instructor, in the eighties. pressure gauges were standard equip. and checking your air supply and allowing 500 p.s.i. reserve made perfect sense and was reinforced throughout the course. now, on the other hand, i was certified in 1966 at age 12. too young for a card so i recieved a letter of completion. the thing then was the j valve, and i soon developed the habit of sucking the very last molecules of air before i pulled that rod. of course, a bit ahead of that i would reach back and have ahold of the rod. hey, you didn't have to leave! then i would look around for a few min. more and regretfully swim up (no b.c.) this was in the puget sound region, and that is how i made every dive. at age 14 i spent some time in s. cal. and had an incredible time. and one beautiful day in the kelp, when i pulled that rod after sucking that last atom, i discovered that it had already been pulled by the kelp. so, swim up into a thick kelp mat and claw through whili seeing stars, gasp desperately, and hope nobody saw that . it is probably best not to run out.