WHAT THE F***

I am planning a trip to Anilao in the Philippines. As usual when I plan trips, I tend to search the internet and watch a number of videos from the place I plan to visit. More and more often I tend to find videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG6VYO2dKZg

One thing is behaving like the guys on the video, horrible as it may be! A whole other thing is vidoeing it and actually posting it on the net. To me that indicates that the participants are fine with what they are doing, enjoying feeding fish and standing on coral. What is wrong with the courses these guys have gone through? Is there anywhere in the world where this kind of behaviour is deemed acceptable? If so, where and why? If not, how come they have a card? And, what is the guide doing? Does any card issuer condone this kind of diving? If not, why does it happen? To me, the diving skills that the divers show indicates that they are pretty recently certified, so memory lapse shouldn´t be an issue.

I am planning a trip to Anilao in the Philippines. As usual when I plan trips, I tend to search the internet and watch a number of videos from the place I plan to visit. More and more often I tend to find videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG6VYO2dKZg

 

One thing is behaving like the guys on the video, horrible as it may be! A whole other thing is vidoeing it and actually posting it on the net. To me that indicates that the participants are fine with what they are doing, enjoying feeding fish and standing on coral. What is wrong with the courses these guys have gone through? Is there anywhere in the world where this kind of behaviour is deemed acceptable? If so, where and why? If not, how come they have a card? And, what is the guide doing? Does any card issuer condone this kind of diving? If not, why does it happen? To me, the diving skills that the divers show indicates that they are pretty recently certified, so memory lapse shouldn´t be an issue.

Not sure if there was a guide, so it seems. If it was the person feeding the fish, they may want to consider going back and getting something to attach their Octo and console a bit more. Looked like a group of people with no diving experience whatsoever (the person who posted it said they were new at the time), but that does not excuse the whole scene. People really should need to be checked out before being taken out to dive in areas that can be damaged. One thing that is good about going Cenote diving is that the operators I have gone with always check the skills out before letting divers go into the caves, they just don't take someone's word on it.

But unfortunately, as has been pointed out in the past, dive operators need to make a living and it is a balance there about who gets out to dive.

Looks like your typical Japanese diver to me. God knows how they pass their OW certification. I have witnessed this kind of diving quite a bit and in most cases they have been Japanese. I am not racist, so dont even go there moderators. I am telling it how I have seen things.

Stew

Too much beer. Can't think english. Use google translate swedinsh-enlishg.

Tar detta på svenska då jag inte orkar tänka engelskt efter kvällens öl.

Jag var faktiskt på den platsen i April 2009. Dök med en guide som började mata fiskarna under dyket (var bara vi två som dök) och jag frågade varför han gjorde det när vi kom upp igen.

Tydligen gör de alltid så på den platsen (inga andra platser när jag var med i alla fall) eftersom det var någon grav av något slag. Kommer inte ihåg exakt, men jag tror att två fiskare dog på den platsen (eller fick askan uthälld där). Därför ser man korset på botten.

Detta förklarar dock inte kass avvägning och varför de stod på botten, men varför de matade fiskarna. Mina loggar är lite luddiga dessutom, men jag har för mig att jag såg pygmésjöhästar vid ca 28m djup på det stället. Missade fokusen helt och fick inga bra bilder...

Lycka till med din resa. /K (#11623 på dykarna.nu)

Sorry to say it but this is not just a problem with the Japanese, you should see the havoc that Saudi's have caused with spear guns in the Red( now nearly DEAD) sea.

The agencies lower and lower the standards for the diving certifications and if on top of that you have ignorant people, the result is a disaster.

These guys after destroying the reef I wonder what they did with the plastic bags, I bet the plastic is now floating in the ocean.

I am planning a trip to Anilao in the Philippines. As usual when I plan trips, I tend to search the internet and watch a number of videos from the place I plan to visit. More and more often I tend to find videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG6VYO2dKZg

 

One thing is behaving like the guys on the video, horrible as it may be! A whole other thing is vidoeing it and actually posting it on the net. To me that indicates that the participants are fine with what they are doing, enjoying feeding fish and standing on coral. What is wrong with the courses these guys have gone through? Is there anywhere in the world where this kind of behaviour is deemed acceptable? If so, where and why? If not, how come they have a card? And, what is the guide doing? Does any card issuer condone this kind of diving? If not, why does it happen? To me, the diving skills that the divers show indicates that they are pretty recently certified, so memory lapse shouldn´t be an issue.

Bent I only glanced thru but I know that site pretty well. It's mostly sand around the rock and where the cross is, the rocks around it don't have a lot of life. Cathedral itself isn't too damaged.

As for fish feeding, we know that is a way to bring in the occasional newbie divers.

You want to see damage, look at uw photographers who squash nudies/seahorses or destroy scenes so no one else can take the photo during a shootout. No group of people who are perfect.

Bent I only glanced thru but I know that site pretty well. It's mostly sand around the rock and where the cross is, the rocks around it don't have a lot of life. Cathedral itself isn't too damaged.

As for fish feeding, we know that is a way to bring in the occasional newbie divers.

You want to see damage, look at uw photographers who squash nudies/seahorses or destroy scenes so no one else can take the photo during a shootout. No group of people who are perfect.

I did not at all try to put blame on any specific group. I simply do not believe that the nationalitybased frowning on dive behaviour is very productive. UW photographers squashing nudies or seahorses or destroying scenes should also be stopped, as far as I se the responsibility of dive guides. I guess the bigger picture I try to make a point of is the apparent lack of understanding and skill that goes into showing such behaviour as in this video. I got my certification 1999, and my instructor would certainly have hammered me for diving like that, and I am pretty sure he wouldn´t have let me pass. I have gone through a number of courses since then, and I have the distinct feeling that the instructors I have had on every step would have taken me out of the water and explained to me that I was showing very poor dive skills, dangerous not only to the environment, but also to myself, had I done what is shown there.

If that kind of diving is accepted at the dive site in question, I guess nothing will grow there!

However, I get your point on it being mostly sand. Then the question still remains how a diver, or divers, with so utterly poor skills, ever have pased their certification. It also is a mystery to me how anyone would like to actually post it on the net!

With regard to the fish feeding, despite diving quite a lot during the last years, I have never seen it performed in that way. As far as I know, the places I tend to go to, alternatively the dive operations I tend to choose, definitely do not accept it. Is this a common ocurrence? I did a number of dives in the Visayas recently and never saw anything like it. On the other hand, it could be argued that the feding in itself isn´t a major problem compared to other poblems.

Once again, to be very clear, I had no intent of starting any nationality bashing, or any other grouping of people.

I am a diving instructor and a fairly senior one as it goes, and can guarantee you that if we saw divers behaving like that out here (mombasa, kenya) they most certainly would not be in the water for long! Yes i am with that 'Put another Dollar In' agency but have to say out of all of them PADI does by far the most to promote enviromental awareness and protection and through their AWARE stuff spends millions of dollars on projects but lets not start another competition between agencies.. all of them have much to offer (yep, i am going for a UN job!

With this video, don't think it has anything to do with standard slipping on minimum requirements, it is just a bunch of complete morons presumably lead by an even bigger one!! If we have students with dodgy buoyancy we keep them the hell away from the reef! Even a Nudibranx has the brains to work that one out!

What would have been funny was if one of them had stepped on a stone fish... now that would stop them from doing it again!!

Fish feeding is a lot more of a problem than many people realise. The local fishermen will go and catch anything, how ever small, and it simply makes them a easy sitting target for them and one net. Being that most fish reproduce on the reefs.. well.. it ain't hard to work it out...

There is most certainly a problem in developing countries and 'environmental awareness' or to be more honest... 'environmental give a shit'. Their number one concern is cash, and don't have the mentality to look forward a few years and see that there wont be much left to show divers if they carry on the way the do. As with regards to who is the worse culprits of reef bashing.. well, photographers are definitely way up there! hehe.. don't so much mean the pro's yet i am sure most of us have seen some stuff that leaves you speechless performed by people who should know a lot lot better, but more the average diver with under a hundred dives or so and a point and shoot!

The real crux of it i feel comes down to just the general lack of understanding of the fundamental importance of the reefs. It isn't done out of malice, just people are busy with their lives and it hasn't dawned on them, which definitely makes it the instructor and dive schools role to try to educate them, but shouting and screaming at them achieves nothing. Anyway, it is a very long topic which will always be in debate...

Hope all having a good weekend..

If that kind of diving is accepted at the dive site in question, I guess nothing will grow there!

However, I get your point on it being mostly sand. Then the question still remains how a diver, or divers, with so utterly poor skills, ever have pased their certification. It also is a mystery to me how anyone would like to actually post it on the net!

Well true enough but the area isn't really a high current area so it's not going to be a burgeoning coral garden. Also it's sites like that that people want to see , fishy and pretty with a bit of manmade stuff around. Like it or not, it's tourism that helps with protection in that area.

As for how these kind of divers pass, I think you'll agree there are many people who should not be allowed to be parents, drive, operate heavy machinery, be the President of the US or even near a keyboard on a forum.

With regard to the fish feeding, despite diving quite a lot during the last years, I have never seen it performed in that way. As far as I know, the places I tend to go to, alternatively the dive operations I tend to choose, definitely do not accept it. Is this a common ocurrence? I did a number of dives in the Visayas recently and never saw anything like it. On the other hand, it could be argued that the feding in itself isn´t a major problem compared to other poblems.

I've seen feeding of fish in every major dive destination in one form or another. Obviously there is behavior modification, fish like fusiliers get really rowdy when they don't get their food! In fact I remember playing a practical joke with the feeding fish on someone swimming in the water by throwing food around him, while he was doing his DM training laps. Scene from Piranha 3D, minus the girls!

It's relatively harmless until the fish get bigger, but then it's an informed decision for those sort of dives.

Like it or not, it's tourism that helps with protection in that area.

Fair enough, I am not against tourism and the dollars it brings in. I just feel that dive tourism could have some what higher standards on participant skills and/or behaviour. Then again, my monthly income is to a large degree independent of what I make out of diving, so my opinion is to a large degree not that important in the context? It is obviously easy to have an attitude against something that doesn´t affects ones own economy!

As for how these kind of divers pass, I think you'll agree there are many people who should not be allowed to be parents, drive, operate heavy machinery, be the President of the US or even near a keyboard on a forum.

That is very true! However, to be honest, I am also extraordinarily confounded by some of the examples you mention. Actually even more than I am surprised by the diver behaviour in the video! So that doesn´t really help me understand how the instructor let them pass! That it happens is clear, what I really am surprised by is the why! But you have a bunch of big why´s (and at least one megabig why) in your list. I guess the world is full of mysteries!

I've seen feeding of fish in every major dive destination in one form or another.

I have only seen it a few times, and only once from a boat, otherwise mostly from jetties in the T. A. R. park in Sabah (where it actually now is forbidden). Never in the water. Then again, I do not have really strong oppinions one way or the other with regard to the feeding, at least as long as it is kept to certain sites. I would really dislike having to dive in a greater ara of "begging" fish.

Regards

Bent

Maybe those guys are not certified at all.

I don't know the english word for this, in spanish is 'bautizo'.

When a instructor takes a bunch of non certified guys into the water to a depth no bigger than 10 meters.

The results are like what we can see in the video.