You should, according to PADI norms, be offered a refresher dive. It costs $10 more and you spend 15 minutes with a dive master reviewing basic skills before a normal dive. The dive master also then knows to keep you close during the dive.
This is exactly what the resorts I've been to do. Dives are free (All inclusive, Couples Jamaica) but if don't have a dive book with a signed off dive in the last year it is 50$ for a refresher/skills test.
I've normally felt really safe on these but once there was way to many people for them all to be babysat and the group actually got split up due to 'issues' that the following guide had to help with.
Plenty of resorts and other destinations offer resort and discovery diving. You do need be 10 years old, but no prior experience needed, after some basics some places let you do 1-2 open water dives in the same day! All equip is provided. You really DO NOT configure any of your stuff on these dives (you do get comfortable breathing underwater). It's a scuba dive "experience".
Unless you are a diver please don't comment with this type of snark - seriously.
" Discover Scuba Diving is a quick and easy introduction to what it takes to explore the underwater world. To sign up for a PADI Discover Scuba Diving experience, you must be at least 10 years old. No prior experience with scuba diving is necessary, but you need to be in reasonable physical health. Are you ready to try it out? "
Resort Diving is mostly safe, the dive profile helps keep you safe. At 30ft, a lot less can go wrong. You can easily survive a rapid ascent from 30ft, heck you likely don't need to actively blow bubbles unless you took a huge breath or are ascending super fast. OP who hasn't dove in a while shouldn't make their first dive on vacation a 120ft bottom. They will likely not remember how to breath, how to swim and will consume too much air and blow the dive for everyone. I refuse to dive with strangers on dive boats, I have never once had a dive buddy physically verify my secondary and some of them get weird when I ask them to verify their primary and secondary with me. The 'I know' eye rolls when i show them where my weight release is, where things are on my BC. Honestly thats what pushed me in to technical diving, everyone takes it serious. If we do our math wrong and the drop tanks aren't sufficient or if the trimix was off we were all dead. When we did cave dives, knowing each exit, knowing the routes we were going to navigate. Rehearsing the transitions between lines. Even with the best planning, things go wrong. Read up on the Diepolder II and III caves - scary stuff
What instructors and dive-masters actually do (or should / are trained to do) for those dives is hold onto the first stage regulator at the top of the tank for the entire duration of the dive and never pass 12 meters. The diver never even needs to worry about buoyancy. We use to call them Lipton (tea) dives, because it was just dipping tourists into the water ;) They are absolutely 100% safe when done according to the requirements.
I called them "disco" dives. Dive down a bit, show them some lights and some fish turn around a few times and back up. A play on the discovery label.
But yeah, the grumpy "master" divers will be yelling at you from shore about the whole thing!
Def want 100% contact from start to finish, and if you keep dive to 8-10 meters or less (hard bottom) helps. Just throw some statues / structures down there to look at.
Things to watch for. Folks who can't equalize - just come up or do a super shallow route if you can. And def need to make sure folks can breathe comfortably underwater (shallow water / cow pen). Also doesn't need to be long, it's about the experience. Some idiots take advantage of the depth to extend time which is silly.
Another labor was resort dive, but wasn't sure what differences / similarities were between all these experiences.
Absolutely, I am a somewhat experienced diver looking at certifications, but it's all too easy to forget things even if you have more than a vague recollection. Whenever I haven't dived for a couple years, I always ask an instructor to check on me while I prepare for the first dive, because I just don't trust myself.
A dive or two later I am okay with helping newly certified divers both on shore and on the boat, but on the first dive after some time you should never overestimate your memory.
> it's all too easy to forget things even if you have more than a vague recollection. Whenever I haven't dived for a couple years, I always ask an instructor to check on me while I prepare for the first dive, because I just don't trust myself.
If you mean something to go through physically (e.g. on paper) no, at least not for non-technical dives. There is a standard list of things to do, which I agree with the parent comment you should remember more than vaguely before diving.
This should be mandatory for a lot of sports, honestly. Assisted climbing (lead, top-roping) comes to mind. Kinda crazy that in many gyms you can get on a wall with no verification that your belay knows what they're doing.
What evidence? Evidence that lots of diving places take safety shortcuts?
I myself got my first certifications with two amazing divers, they taught me very well and I had a lot of fun. However they also allowed people to take dives that they weren't certified for, because it was a small diving center they could only do two dives a day and they had to satisfy a wide range of divers.
They did that with people that they had taught and knew well, and never had issues (certainly not a 60m compressed air dive as in the article!) but it did indeed make diving somewhat less safe.
Well, presumably if OP statement were true, recreational diving would involve large numbers of casualties. Casualties in recreational diving are somewhat rare, however, at 2 per million dives.
Tourist dives are even safer since they do not perform advanced dives. Overall, the evidence does not support the view "If you really have only a vague recollection of basic safety checks you shouldn't be diving - seriously."
Most tourists diving have only that and they're not dying in droves.
Of course, because things very rarely go south, especially to the point of someone dying. But still, spending half an hour reviewing some basic course material is not a huge thing to ask.
