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IMPORTANT INFORMATION!! Dear people at cavediver ! This posting contains a few facts about Mr. Matthew London, and his diveshop "Scuba World" in Phuket, Thailand. I was there from November 2000 until the end of February 2001. I feel it is my responsibility as a recreational instructor and technical diver to warn the international community about a few personally observed practices that are going on there. 1. The diveshop is advertising with a big GUE sign offering DIR training. That is unjustified, because Mr. London is not and has never been a GUE instructor, although he pretended to be such. None of the students of his fake GUE courses have ever received a certification card. 2. The diveshop is advertising to be a PADI facility. That is not true, the diveshop is not a PADI divecenter at ANY level and Mr. London is not a renewed PADI instructor. 3. The diveshop is advertising to offer DIR training. That is not true. Although Mr. London is using homemade "DIR" equipment, for example cave canisters that are very prone to flooding and spring finstraps with sharp edges, the attitude towards technical and overhead diver training can only be called hazardous and random. a. There are NO standardized gas mixtures, because the local filling boy (no blender certificate) who is in charge of filling deco and bottom mixes seemingly can't come up with the right blends. EAN60, EAN70 and other mixes are used by Mr. London for deco AND bottom gas. b. Routinely there are cavern students with 2x15 liter steel tanks and WETSUITS in a 40m deep spring with a visibility of 0.5 meters doing "line following while air sharing" scenarios in 5-7 meters of water. No redundant buoyancy was present or even recommended. This dive was the last dive in my NSS cavern course after some days of training in the pool and a freshwater lake. Mr. London told me, that now I was a cavern diver but I wouldn't get a certification because "we are going right through to full cave. I assign you a mapping project, that is going to be your full cave ticket.". I had never been in an overhead environment in my course. c. Mr. London accepted students with ca. 20 dives into a NSS cavern course which included the following exercise: Line following with eyes closed while not wearing a mask and surprise air sharing events. The student in question was not able to do this, and because Mr. London deemed this as the "crucial test" for safe cavern diving the student was not certified. The student got a scooter card and a 1/2 day nitrox course as compensation. ALL cavern courses that are "taught" at Scuba World utilize double tanks and cave canister lights; if you can't deal with that, you get an Advanced Nitrox card, because "there are the same skills anyway". d. After my own "cavern experience", again with NO certification, I was taken with another diver into a cave on Phi Phi islands, that Mr. London himself described as "dangerous and silty". We ventured through a restriction far beyond the light zone until we reached the end of the cave, ca. 70-80 linear meters from open water. The other diver was not cave or cavern certified either. After having done this one cave dive, I had to guide an experienced cave diver into the same system the next weekend. Mr. London told me to lie about my certification status if the visiting diver asked about it. I was told to tell him that I was a full cave diver. I regret having done that dive. All the other various standard violations concerning PADI courses are of no concern in this post. I hope to have helped with this open letter to make cavern and cave diving a safe sport for all of you. I'm sure you all can draw your own conclusions of the above. Greetings, Benji Schaub This letter is forwarded to TDI, NauiTec, GUE, and the cavediver and techdiver mailing lists. -------------------- E-Mail sent using the Free Trial Version of WorldMerge, the fastest and easiest way to send personalized e-mail messages. More information at http://www.coloradosoft.com/worldmrg 987508
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