The Moral?
I’ve told this story a lot over the last twelve years (my friends are no doubt sick of hearing it). For the first several years, I simply dismissed the diver as the most egregious example of Evolution in Action I’d ever come across. You know the type:
- Never takes diving seriously.
- Never listens to his instructors.
- Never listens to dive boat briefings.
- Never thinks the rules apply to him.
- Never imagines that he could actually die under water (or take others with him).
In the past few years, however, I’ve started to wonder.
- What if it wasn’t entirely this guy’s fault?
- What if his instructor didn’t stress how seriously he needed to take diving?
- What if the training materials he learned with didn’t come out and clearly state that, yes, you can actually get killed while diving?
- What if he bought into the dive industry’s rhetoric that diving is easy, safe and fun — and that any idiot whose check will clear can become certified?
There are certainly a lot of things that, as a boat captain, I wish I’d done differently. Greater familiarity with the area might have helped. Still, captains who’d been there longer than I had couldn’t tell me what they’d have done under the same, very unusual circumstances.
Still, the bottom line is:
- Seventeen divers had a safe, enjoyable time because they not only listened to and followed directions, they were honest about their own skills and abilities (in this respect, the dentist who elected to remain on board was most likely the best diver of all).
- Idiot Diver, on the other hand, didn’t listen, didn’t believe — and didn’t put his own safety, and that of his fellow passengers, above his desire for immediate gratification.
The most frequent image you see as you page through each issue of StupidDiverTricks.com is that of the Turkey Diver (Rule Number One: Never Dive with Turkeys). You may have thought this was a composite of all the stupid divers I’ve seen or heard about over the years. It’s not. It is exactly what I see every time I try to remember Idiot Diver’s face.
Truly, he was a prime candidate for the title of Dumbest Diver Ever. In fact, his stupidity was only eclipsed by that of the Dumbest Instructor Ever.
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