A dive briefing

Having dived in the Mediterranean, I have been accustomed to European style dive briefings. Likewise, in Australia, we standardised dive briefings at many dive operations to mitigate any possible legal ramifications. We made sure we were meeting voluntary codes of conduct.

We had boat briefings and dive briefings printed on laminated sheets in bullet point format so as to not miss an important point, the actual briefing was then left to the finesse of the staff member and their personal delivery. It is a fairly standard risk management practice; not only that, it is best practice to inform the divers in your charge of boat procedures and potential hazards.

So when I dive in South East Asia and I receive no briefing from the moment I walk into the dive centre to the moment I hit the water, I wonder about the professionalism of the operation. I remember walking into a dive centre in Moalboal, Cebu - I was just left standing around and not even acknowledged as I stood there.

Eventually, one of the customers, yes, one of the divers and not the owner or staff showed me where to place my equipment, where the weights were, the washing facilities and departure times for the boat - unbelievable.

During my week of diving at this dive centre, he was the only guy who actually spoke to me along with his friends, the owner and staff completely ignored me, the only time they spoke to me was when I paid the bill at the end.

That was naturally minimal conversation in order to complete the financial transaction - strange. Even more strange was the fact that this was a German owned and run operation, normally they are run with the famed German efficiency.

On my next trip to the Philippines just a couple of months later, I was diving on Panglao Island and ran into Andre and his bunch of mates again. He was a profilic whore monger who had along with his mates had his bar girls out on the boat swimming and sunning themselves and generally playing up.

I was once again traveling alone and as he was once again already diving at this operation and gave me the rundown in lieu of an actual staff member performing any type of briefing.

It was a fun party atmosphere on the boat with all the girls misbehaving and playing up outside the confines of the club where they worked - it made for a fun week, better than any of the staff provided.