Dive Shop Bluefield—a shop to avoid in Okinawa, Japan.

[rjarnold]

Just thought I’d share my experiences with this dive shop located in Okinawa, Japan, for anyone considering which shop to go with for their excursions.

First, I want to explain that I was with a very large group---three boats, in fact, were needed to accommodate all the divers from the conference I was attending in Okinawa.

Our group paid for an “all day” excursion to the Kerama Islands that was paid to Dive Shop Bluefield (170 YEN). After payment and some weeks later, we were informed that gear, nitrox, and the third dive were not included in the price (35, 10 per dive, and 55 YEN, respectively). Fine, they usually aren’t, but some people thought they would be for the price of the dives (three dives have always been the norm for an “all day” excursion for where I dive, but so be it).
A couple of days before the excursion, we get the obligatory email about what to bring, again extra prices, etc., and the fact that dive plans may change due to weather, but in such an event we would be notified in case we wanted to cancel, etc.

Day of:
The organization of this excursion was horrendous; yes, it was a large group, but the organizers themselves were doing everything but falling into the water trying to figure out their own partitioning schemes. The divers were actually quite patient and just went where they were told. MOST of us had rented gear. I like to bring my own gear, but we were there for a conference, and one day’s worth of diving wasn’t worth lugging all that gear for (that seemed to be the general consensus of the group as well). What we got: a bunch of old, tattered gear, and some that seemed fairly suspect.

At this point I’m still fine---they’re nickel and diming us, the gear is old, and they’re disorganized, but I can handle all that. And then I realized that we weren’t going to get depth gauges. I had an SPG, but no way to time my dive or to know what depth I was at. We were told that we just needed to stay with our DMs and things would be fine. Right.

Zip ahead a little and we’re off, but we get to our destination rather quickly. The Kerama Islands are a ways from Okinawa, hence the large amount of money we paid to go there. There were other excursions with other dive companies for places closer to Okinawa that were cheaper, but for us there that day, we chose to go to the further, more spectacular places, and we paid money for that (and many of us will get another chance!). So you can imagine how shocked we all were when we learned, at the first dive site, that we were just diving off Okinawa Island itself.

I’m not going to get too much into the diving itself---it all depends on your perspective, etc. I think most of us would have been fine with it had it been what we paid for. But it wasn’t what we’d paid for, and of the 25 or so divers on my boat, only TWO opted to pay for a third dive, and one of them was me---I’d already gone through the trouble of taking out cash to pay for this third dive, so I figured I’d might as well spend it.

I tried to stay with my DM, I really did. I didn’t even have a camera, so it wasn’t like I was getting left behind because I was trying to get ‘that perfect picture’. I could barely look at any of the small things (and there were very few larger pelagic fish around---the translator on board laughed and said that was because they liked to eat all the fish around Okinawa, to which a diver replied that that was the reason they didn’t pay to dive off Okinawa). But the DM did keep getting out of my sight, and on the second dive, I lost her. I ended up coming up with another group and found that she was already on the boat. Our dives were limited to 35-40 minutes, incredulously, so perhaps I’d gone over that time---I wouldn’t know, since I had no way of timing my dive. Perhaps even more ridiculous, the third dive was my deepest dive. We were supposed to stay above 25 meters, but I could tell from my air consumption that we were below that. My tank also started with only 160 bar on that third dive; I certainly stayed within the 35 minutes for that dive. The depths and times were never shared by the DMs.

One other thing to note---the divers were allowed to snorkel “for free” on that third dive. But since it was the deepest, there was nothing worth snorkeling for, I was told. The previous dive, right near shore and the shallowest, would have been great for them, if the dive company had wanted to make the snorkeling worthwhile for them.

At the end of it all, we were never given a discount for going to Okinawa rather than the Kerama Islands. The day before, with the other dive shop that was doing a half day’s worth of diving (still 2 dives, funny enough, for cheaper), the participants were given a discount because they didn’t go out as far as they were supposed to (not to the Kerama Islands, but somewhere closer). This wasn’t the case for our group. Maybe this would have been ok, if we were told about it beforehand, but we weren’t. Nobody knew we weren’t going to the Kerama Islands until we got to the first dive site off Okinawa. Nobody knew we weren’t going to get the necessary depth gauges to aid in our safety on the dives. I can’t believe that a shop would send all these people out without depth gauges---I’d have brought my own if I knew it was going to be a problem.

This shop did everything it could to maximize profit, and willingly did so at the expense of the diver’s satisfaction and safety.

BTW---certification cards weren’t checked. One girl had lost hers the night before, and luckily for her she didn’t have to worry about it.

[pensacoladiver]

Sounds crappy. Of course, I knew it would be when I read "we were with a large group".

Did you ever have a bad time on a small boat? ...well, except that time you lost your mask and that other time and... Haha

[rjarnold]

Haha, that doesn't even come close to this :P

Sounds crappy. Of course, I knew it would be when I read "we were with a large group".

Did you ever have a bad time on a small boat? ...well, except that time you lost your mask and that other time and... Haha

[BillZ]

I was certified in Okinawa when I was in the Marine Corps in 1991..

If I remember correctly there is some pretty good shore diving around the island. Here's a thread on SB I'm subscribed to - Maybe you could get ahold of the original poster, "Barracuda Smiles", and see if he can point you in the right direction for a decent dive operator.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/introd ... iving.html

[rjarnold]

I doubt I'll be going back to Okinawa anytime soon, but thanks

I was certified in Okinawa when I was in the Marine Corps in 1991..

If I remember correctly there is some pretty good shore diving around the island. Here's a thread on SB I'm subscribed to - Maybe you could get ahold of the original poster, "Barracuda Smiles", and see if he can point you in the right direction for a decent dive operator.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/introd ... iving.html