It's OK to
CALL a DIVE
It’s Always Okay to “Call” a Dive. People learn to dive for all sorts of reasons, my mother loved to watch Jacques Cousteau specials where he would talk about the “ze mysteries of ze deep” or sometimes “ze raptures of ze deep” in his wonderful French accent and I watched with her. And I tried never to miss Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt. I was a kid then but vowed to learn to dive.
I’ve instructed college student marine biologists, surfers, fire fighters and students getting ready to go into the military. I’ve also had reluctant students who were being coerced by significant others.
The point is that people come from all sorts of backgrounds. Some are gung ho and others quite apprehensive. Some have lots of water experience, some almost none.
The first thing I say to someone who is nervous about making their open water dives is this: “Scuba diving is a recreational sport. You don’t ‘have’ to do it. You choose to do it. I think you can do it and that you’ll find it’s a lot of fun if you give it a chance, but you should only do this if you want to.”
Only one time in many years of instructing have I had someone just say no, not going to do this.