Angry as can be...!

Well that's good to know Mike.

I suppose that the other aspect of all this is that a diver displaying such poor technique could just be considered as lacking control and therefore constituting a risk to both himself and others. A dive centre could use this as a valid reason to ask such a diver to not carry a camera and to dive with an instructor until better skills were displayed. Not an easy task ..... I remember one of our local dive boat skippers explaining how he had watched a hungover 'techie' trying to assemble his gear one morning. After a few minutes he went over to the guy and said that in his state he "needn't bother fitting it together because you aren't going to be diving off my boat anyway"! Its not something that many operators or skippers will do, but IMHO the skipper actually went up in most diver's estimation and I for one will use his boat in preference to others.

On another note, do you remember those Olympus housings you let me have? Well one is still going strong and being used by an author to take (mostly wreck) shots to illustrate his books. It now looks even better used!

Besides the terrible damage to the environment, this kind of behavior influences the opinions of other divers about ALL underwater photographers and videographers. I am frequently reading comments by DMs about how they have to pay special attention to photographers because of their tendency to damage the environment, and also see all kinds of comments by divers about the bad behavior of photographers.

I hate those pictures on this thread. I am embarrassed and it wasn't me! I can understand how someone may on occasion have a buoyancy issue and inadvertently do something they regret, but to ignore or not care what they are doing is simply unacceptable. If this continues, some dive ops may start refusing to offer services to photographers.

Belgian? Amphibico Phenom? Home made bottom tray with open tubes and t-piece to use as a tripod? Top side EX1? Aged around 50......?

 

I think he's here now.......

Yes Richard, that is the description.

The group had mentioned they were spending the next week in Palau. Again, I'll reiterate, we found the group to be pleasant folks who were considerate and nice to be around.

Also, when Mike passed on that Jan (the dive operations manager) had a meeting with all the DMs to discuss this, it didn't surprise me at all. The Manta Ray Bay dive operation is top-notch, actually the best we've ever encountered, and we found Jan himself to be professional, talented, and a pleasure to dive with. That he had a meeting to make sure this wouldn't happen again is in keeping with the high standards we saw there.

We had spent the week prior on board the Palau Aggressor. In retrospect, we wished we had simply spent 2 weeks at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel!

All the best, James Flenner

Having thought about this I am now intrigued. Given that the dive industry is one well versed in risk assessment, surely most operators must have in place some form of procedure which deals with the risk of having clients who exhibit such destructive, annoying and potentially dangerous (see some of the comments by posters) behaviour. Perhaps I'm being naive, but I can't imagine that this is unknown and extremely rare behaviour so I would anticipate that it should be pre-considered and that an appropriate response would be ready to deal with such people when they appear? Or am I wrong?

In no way cutting the perp slack.... but the divemasters that took us out did the very same thing

on our Mandarin dive and I cringed every time I heard the coral break. If you look down there's

piles of evidence of years of the same behavior and it's not just the tourists.