Valet Diving Needs To DIE! The Most Dangerous Trend in Scuba Diving

This scuba trend of valet diving needs to die. It needs to be drowned in a bucket of its own blood. I hate it. You should too. Here's why. Ladies and gentlemen, what's going on? Welcome to Divers Ready. My name's James. It is so great to see all of your smiling faces. We're back once again with another Mouthpiece Monday. If you're new to the channel, welcome. Consider to make your next dive on our subscribe button because we make videos with one simple goal in mind, and that's to help make you a better diver. Like today, a perfect example of our Mouthpiece Mondays, which are kind of like my op-eds where I sound off on a particular trend about the scuba diving industry that I think has some pitfalls, and valet diving is definitely one of those. In this video, we're going to look at what is valet diving, why is it a problem, and what we should do about it. Let's start with what is a valet. That's the correct pronunciation, valet in French. A valet is a man's male attendant, a personal assistant if you like, but particularly with a focus on clothing, helping his lordship, getting dressed, and making sure that he always looks his best. It's the male equivalent of a lady's maid. You've all seen Downton Abbey, you get it. In America, they prefer the French pronunciation valet, and a valet over here means somebody to park your car for you if you don't know how to do it yourself. But what is valet diving? Well, valet diving is a term that has been coined and has become very prevalent in the Caribbean and is fast spreading across Southeast Asia, which basically means we will do everything for you except the dives. All you have to do is get in the water and take photos, that's it. Sounds fantastic. It includes things like carrying the gear for you, setting your gear up, checking your pressure, checking your nitrox measures. It includes breaking down your gear or switching it to the second tank. It includes rinsing your gear for you, hanging your gear up, storing your gear, and the next time you see your gear, it's assembled, ready for your next dive. It's particularly popular in vacation areas. You don't tend to hear valet diving in places where you go and dive yourself at the weekend in an area where you live. Convenience, ease, relaxation, you're on vacation, chill, drop your brain into neutral. Sounds idyllic. Why would this be a bad thing, James? The idea is to provide luxury service. You guys know I'm all about excellence in customer service in the scuba diving industry, but valet diving has become such a buzz word that I was on a dive boat earlier this year and the dive master came over and said, oh, let me set your gear up for you. I said, no, thanks, mate. I got it. You're cute. Oh, bless you. No, mate, I got it. Don't worry about it. I'm on it. He said, no, no, I have to set your gear up. I said, what do you mean you have to set my gear up? He said, if my manager sees a customer setting their own gear up, I will get in trouble. What now? I beg your pardon. All right, so if that's what valet diving is, why is it a problem? Two reasons specifically. Number one, ownership. Number two, complacency. Ownership. I want to set up my own gear. I want to do my own checks, and I want to have ownership and responsibility over my own dives. I absolutely want to make sure that my gear is set up the personal way that I like to dive it. Now, how can a complete stranger, a random dive master on a boat somewhere, know how I like my gear as opposed to anyone else on the boat? Are they going to set up your gear the way you like it? I'm sure all of you watching this have a preference as to how you like your scuba gear assembled. The same thing at the end of the dive. If they're going to rinse your gear for you, are they going to do as thorough a job as you would? I'm sure when you look after your gear and you go through the maintenance process of making sure it's desalinated after a dip in the ocean, you take extra particular care because you've spent money on that gear. How can you trust a perfect stranger to provide the kind of care for your equipment when they're not going to see you next week? Let me give you this example. When I took over the running of a boutique luxury dive center in the Caribbean, they were just starting to try the whole valet dive experience out. In my first month in charge, I fired three dive masters on drug and alcohol-related offenses. One was doing cocaine in the v-berth of the dive boat while divers were underwater. Do you want that person setting your gear up, your life support equipment? I don't think so. Let me be clear, I'm not here to crap on instructors, but in any industry, there are good apples and bad. Look, I know some of you might be thinking, well, I only get to dive once a year, James, so I need the dive master's help to set my gear up because I don't remember all the time. That's totally fine. That's what the dive master's there for. They're there to help you and support you, but you still need to be the one doing it. You can set your gear up while the dive master watches, call them over after you've done it and just have them check it to make sure you've done it right. Nothing wrong with that at all. They're there for your safety. Use them for that, but you need to be the one to set your own gear up. If it's been a while, if you need to re-familiarize yourself, even more of a reason that you need to set your own gear up. It's completely unacceptable to be like, well, I forgot how to assemble scuba equipment, so I'm just going to have somebody else do it for me and go diving anyway, because if that's the case, what else have you forgotten? That brings me to my second problem with valet diving, complacency. If you're willing to give up assembling your own gear, what else are you willing to give up? Equipment assembly and the pre-dive safety check are the first two skills you learn on an open water course for good reason, because if you don't know how to do those things, if you can't safely assemble your own dive gear, it doesn't matter how good your buoyancy or your trim or your propulsion are. If you get into the habit of relying on dive masters and instructors to set all the gear up for you and do everything for you and trust them to keep you safe, one day you're going to find yourself in a situation where you're either at a dive center that doesn't provide valet service or you're trying to do a shore dive somewhere and you've forgotten the essential skills. Maybe you forget how to set your equipment up correctly and you have an equipment failure, or maybe you forget to turn your gas on and you haven't done your pre-dive checks properly. Your last thought as you sink into the abyss is, oh, my dive master usually turns my gas on for me. No, I don't want that for you guys. What's the solution then? Look, maybe it's just me. Maybe valet diving is totally fine and it's just me always having been self-reliant and having too high of an expectation on other divers. But in this life, you pack your own chute. Scuba diving is inherently dangerous. We know that. We all agree to it. I want agency and responsibility over my own dives, and I would hope that you guys do too. So how do we solve valet diving then? It's very simple. You draw a line in the sand and you separate out things that are good service that can be enjoyed while you're on vacation versus things that are equivalent of having the agency over your own dives removed from you. So let's do that then. Let's draw a line and separate out things that are good service from things that are removing responsibility from the diver. Good service would be things like carrying your bag to the boat for you. Nothing wrong with that. Fetching weights for you, offering you towels or cold drinks or snacks on the boat. Good service, right? Carrying tanks, giving a thorough dive briefing and a familiarization with the dive site. That's all good service. Removing responsibility is things like the dive master setting your gear up for you or analyzing nitrox for you. What? That shouldn't be a thing that's happening, but it is. Doing the pre-dive check for you. I've seen it where they take the tanks and put them on the back of the boat and the diver sits down. Literally, they do all the clips up for the diver and everything, put the reg in their mouth, do all the checks, check the buoyancy, check everything, and then just literally roll them in the water. The diver hasn't done anything. Doing dive planning for a diver. No, everyone does their own dive plan. That's why you're taught it at open water level. There is nothing wrong with letting the dive crew carry your gear for you. You're on vacation. Kick back, relax, but set your own gear up. Draw that line in the sand between good customer service and having the responsibility for your dives removed from you. Remember, you can't subcontract out your own safety. That way, if you're completely kitted up and you've done your own checks and you know that you're ready to dive, if then the captain or the first mate on the boat double checks that your gas is on, for example, they're doing it as a double check, not as the primary check. That can only make you safer. One final thought, guys, if you're a dive master and instructor and you work at a place that provides valet service, please, for the love of God, let your client set their gear up for you. If your boss has a problem with it, give them my cell phone number and I'll be happy to chat with them or maybe share this video with them. I'd love to hear your thoughts on valet service in the comment section of this video below. As with everyone watching this, have you experienced valet diving? What did you think about it? Did it make you feel safer or less safe? Do you feel like you're having agency removed from you or were you still responsible for your dives? That's it for me, ladies and gentlemen. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so already. Until next time, my name's James, this was your Divers Ready Mouthpiece Monday for this week. Dive safe, dive often.