Overall

This review for Scuba San Diego in La Jolla Cove hopefully will help you avoid a very bad dive experience, save you some money, and help minimize your vacation disappointments. My wife and I have completed six dives under (plus certification dives) but consider ourselves beginners (although fully trained). Wewent on the La Jolla Kelp Forest dive with Scuba San Diego after being informed by a staff member on the phone that their guides are familiar with all experience levels including those who have never dived outside of certification. On 19 August 2005, we met our guide Stephan and another diver who had only four dives. Stephan was not a happy person: grumpy and condescending from the start; my overall impression was that he was not enthused about taking us out and that we were intruding on his morning. Our instructions included the all important “If you get separated, check around for seven seconds and if you don’t see anyone, surface and we’ll meet up.” Entering the water, visibility was low, but half the fun of diving is just being underwater. We followed the guide and the other diver but for some reason Stephan and the other diver surfaced twice; we stayed down the first time but surfaced the second because we were not certain about what was happening. After going out a fair bit, I turned to check on my wife, turned back and both the guide other diver were no longer in sight. A swell had kicked up the sand and they were gone in the couple of seconds it took to check on my dive buddy/wife. Following instructions, we did two stationary circles locate the guide and after failing, we surfaced as instructed. Around thirty seconds later the guide surfaced and the first words out of his mouth were, “All right guys, I really hate surfacing three times before we’re even out there, it’s unacceptable and it’s giving me a headache.” He even said that we were shortening the other diver’s time underwater. No “Are you all right?” No “What is wrong?” Just straight into criticizing us for following his instructions and blaming us for all three surfacings when this was the first that had been our responsibility. I told him we lost sight and surfaced as we were told and that this was the first time that he had surfaced because of us. His poor surface demeanor above surface was just as poor below the surface and that is a dangerous place to be with a guide whom you do not trust and our confidence in him was gone. After another exchange I had no qualms about surfacing to get away from Stephan so we signaled to him that we were returning, he gave the okay and we went back. On shore, I waited a further half hour to make sure the gear was not stolen. When Stephan returned he would not even look at me. I asked if it was okay to leave the gear there and response: “Yep, you guys okay?” I said “Yes, we’re fine” and left. When I did speak to Rod Watkins, who runs the company, he seemed overly focused on our concerns about the low visibility and kept stressing that visibility was beyond the ability of the Company to control. Obviously, I agreed with that and explained that our concerns were with how his guide handled the low visibility situation. A guide in this situation should recognized that it might be necessary to surface if part of the party becomes separated and not become angry at them for following his own instructions. Rod insisted that Stephan had four positive letters in his file this year (2005) alone, to which I responded ‘that may well be the case and maybe he just had a bad day.’ Rod’s rejoinder that ‘Maybe he did’ didn’t really help me at all. We paid our money to receive quality guiding, irrespective of the visibility.

Atmosphere

Convenience

Safety

Value

Great for: Beaches, Hiking/Camping, History/Culture

Last Visit: august 2005

4 October 2005 | A Yahoo! User

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