a mainland city. I was headed to the Greenhouse Bar one night in downtown Charlotte Amalie with some other dive instructor from the shop. There was about four local West Indian cats hanging out by their car. “Hey white boy,” one calls to me.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Did you know that there is an international airport on the island.” His cold eyes
staring right into my soul.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well why don’t you use it.”
Still, this didn’t bother me. Shit, I was from Southern California, land of road rage, hand guns and serial killers. The Crips and The Bloods and wild Cholos in their low riders. I was a white boy who went to high school in South El Monte. I was the minority growing up and I felt right at home on St. Thomas. I loved it.
Another safari bus pulled up. Then another one, and another. This is going to get ugly. Dan, Cassey and I were the snorkel instructors for the day. We would be out in the water to show people the reef, tell them what type of fish was what. We would hand out fish food-which was dog food-and provide support for the scuba divers should they run into problems and bolt to the surface before their instructor could get to them, which occurred often. We instructors would alternate between teaching the resort courses and doing the snorkeling class. Once in a blue moon we would have a full certification course to teach. These would usually be crew members off one of the ships.
Before I knew it, I was surrounded by about thirty four oblivious people with dive masks on their foreheads, orange life vests around their necks, holding their fins. The majority had stupid smiles plastered across their faces and cheap disposable underwater cameras dangling from their wrists. I gave them a brief class on the snorkel gear and how to us it and then sent them into the water. A next group of about sixteen came lumbering down to meet me at the waters edge.
“Is there a right and left flipper?” an older lady asked. She had a turned up pig
nose and smelled like a goat.
“Is there what?” I said.
“Is their a right and left flipper?” She asked me, like she was talking to someone who didn’t understand English.
“First off,” I said. “It is a fin not a flipper. Dolphins have flippers. Second, no. But if there was a right and a left I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”
“Why not?” asked Pig nose.
“Because I’d just sit back and watch you swim in circles out there.” I said pointing over my shoulder out to the water. She gave me a dumb look then headed out to attempt to snorkel. Christ. what the hell kind of question was that. I mean come on, snorkel gear is pretty much self explanatory. You put the fins on your feet, you put the mask on your face, you put the snorkel in your mouth and go.
Taz, Mike and Holly had their group of six divers in waist deep water. They were going over the different functions of the dive gear and how to use it. Randy was the beach master. He stayed on the beach and got the next wave of divers ready and helped the divers who were finished out of their gear. All the snorkelers were in the water. All seventy five of them bobbing in the water like champagne corks with their silly orange inflatable life vests. Coki Beach, which was so peaceful only forty five minutes earlier, was now littered with awkward bodies; honeymooners, party girls, old farts and faggots. Rental cars began to line the narrow road that led past Coki Beach and ended a few hundred yards at Coral World. Local beach vendors tried to get the tourists to buy their gold and jewelry. The gold and jewelry that they, no doubt, had rolled a cruise ship passenger for, just the previous day. Some locals were also selling the good shit: Big fat buds of weed.
I was amazed. What a cluster fuck. It was so peacful and serene just a few minutes ago and now the barbarians broke down the gates, littering the white sandy beach with their brunch buffet bloated bodies. This was truly a brutal display of tourism.
The Infamous Resort Course, Assault on the Reef and Breaking Rules
Teaching scuba diving in the Caribbean is a different ball game than teaching in the States or England or South America. In the Islands you don’t get the luxury of time to teach an open water course. You have three days to cram everything down the tourists’ throats: Academics and dive tables, pool sessions, four open water dives and a final exam. You may teach a few advanced classes. Once in a while a rescue diver course may come along. As for divemaster, I only taught it twice during the seven years I spent in the islands. By far, the majority of instruction was conducting the infamous Resort Course. This is the crash course in scuba diving. A brief lecture on the basics; Don’t hold your breath, don’t shoot up to the surface, this is your regulator to breathe, these are your fins, not flippers, to swim and don’t stand on the goddamn coral! You’ll do so many resort courses that you’ll feel your sanity slipping at times. At the same time, the experience you gain from teaching the resort course is absolutely invaluable.
If you want to teach in the islands be prepared to bend and, at times, break the rules. If your a “by the book” scuba instructor then stay home. It’s not that resort dive operations go out of the way to break the rules, it’s just that sometimes it’s going to happen. I don’t care what scuba agency you teach under, you will break the rules at one time or another. Check this out. Here’s how it goes down:
You have an instructor or two call in sick. Maybe one is terribly hung over and the other’s coked out. Yes, like in cocaine. There are nineteen tourists with clueless grins plastered acrcoss their faces that signed up for the resort course and it’s just you and another instructor. That’s ten students for one instructor and nine for the other. The ratio, at least when I was teaching in the islands, was six students per one instructor. The dive operatation is on a schedule. The dive boat has to be back at the dock to pick up the certified divers for the last dive of the day. Breaking down the groups to meet the ratio and taking one group down and having the other groups wait on the boat would not be feasable with the time crunch. So you and the other instructor take them all in. Take them all down to thirty feet and hope that you bring every one of them back alive.
Then there is the cardinal rule in scuba instruction: Never leave a student unattended at the surface of the water and never leave a student unattended underwater. This will happen. There you are, twenty five, thirty feet under water with your group of resort divers and everything is going fine. You watch them like a hawk. Everyone is giving you the “OK” sign. Suddenly panic in one of the divers eyes. His eyes turn as big as golf balls. The bastard gives you the out of air sign. But you know he has plenty of air because you just checked it a few minutes ago. The shithead is hyperventilating. He is now close to full blown panic. You swim to him at full speed. It’s too late. He bolts to the surface, ripping his regulator out of his mouth and tearing his mask off his face. You grab him while at the same time you signal to your group to stay where they are. They do, However, their buoyancy is terrible and they kick and bounce off the coral like pin balls. The reef is assaulted. It’s terrible, you can hear the tiny, living organisms screaming as they die. But you can’t worry about that now, you have to take control of your panicked diver. You slow his ascent, hoping he doesn’t get a lung expansion injury. You stuff his regulator back in his mouth. As you’re slowing his ascent you look down to check your other divers. That’s when you see one of the divers, the two hundred and eighty six pound beast of a lady, floating to the surface. Only she’s not in a panic. She somehow just unhooked her eighteen pound weight belt. “Oh fuck,” you say to yourself. “This is really going south now.” You have to stay focused and deal with the lesser of two evils. You get the panicked son of a bitch to the surface and inflate his BCD. You calm him down and signal the boat captain. You tell the diver to swim back to the boat in a calm manner. Always sound like you have total control over the situation. Even make a joke of it by saying something like, “Hey, you just scared all the fish away down there!”
You keep looking down to the other students, who now are wondering what the hell happened to their instructor. You reach your fat student who is bobbing up and down at the surface like a gigantic cork. She has to go back to the boat because there is no way in hell she can get back down without her