Reviews

Dear scuba divers,

Me and my wife joined a weekend recreational diving tour by Eurodive/Dalyan Dive Center on June 11th, 2016 along with some of our diving club members. We encountered an unproffessional behavior by mentioned diving center which might be a vital one. I strongly recommend not to plan diving with this diving center, unless they improve their skills and necessary equipment/training. If you have some feedback by this diving center, I will be happy to hear your experiences with them.

The problem whom my wife faced is as follows, if you would like to continue reading.

First one was a 9 divers planned diving. Even this dive consisted of experienced divers (apart from two 1 * divers), it was crowded. Diving profile was not explained in detail. It was a poor diving plan, at least the implementation was.

There were also lack of instructors too. One of our experienced club members was designated to fill the gap as an assistant instructor who was tasked for following divers from back of group, in order to help instructor which was not fair to enjoy diving. He was also the diving buddy of my wife at the same time.

My wife faced a serious problem in the beginning of the first dive of the day which was a wall dive. She had an equilization problem at the first stage of dive and earlier mentioned some ear problems in the boat during briefing which might cause to cancel diving. This should be a “heads-up” for instructors to be aware. After going in to water, she had two tries (about at most 1.30 minutes) and cancelled diving which was the right decision. But when she reached surface from a couple of meters depth, there were no boat around, no designated diver for wacthing divers, no nothing on harsh sea conditions in the middle of the sea; leaving her all alone. As we realised later, after decending of divers, boat moved to ascent/exit point, a couple of bays back to an unvisible point from where we started diving.

My wife fought for her life, hanging on the razor sharp steep rocks, beaten by waves for approximately 50 minutes. No apology took place by the organisers, instead they blamed my wife for not finding the unvisible boat even though the probable location was not mentioned at pre-diving briefing and hidden a few miles back in a bay. I don’t want to think about what might have happened if she had taken wrong decisions (such as taking wrong direction to swim or go off shore in order to find the location of the boat, or force to continue diving…) Fortunately she is a relatively an experienced diver and remained calm enough to take the right course of action. She holds CMAS 2** license (TSSF registered). She was found hanging on the rocks after the search and was helped to return back to boat by another diving center’s inflated type kayak.

Diving instructor/group leader claimed that she mentioned ascent point but this was not the case. None of our club members who were actualy planned on this dive nor the rest of the divers of our club (who were stand-by for the following dive in the boat) were aware either. Even if we would have been all informed about the following location of boat, it was still out of range/far away for a fully geared diver to swim. Pre-diving briefing was not a complete one and no vital information was included.

What we were briefed is as follows:

• Enter/descent point,

• Approximate depth (mentioned as 30-35 meters/deep diving (out of limits for 1* divers in our group),

• Route (roughly),

• Some air status signals reminder (half, reserve, and decimals),

What was not included in briefing and lack of equipment/personnel:

• Route in detail (dive flowchart, dive profile, map or illustration, descent point, safety stop were not explained),

• Environmental familiarisation,

• Evacuation measures and alternative solutions,

• Emergency measures/planning/call list/ hyperbaric chamber locations,

• Designated diver for watching divers on the surface,

• Marking dive location by flag or floating devices (buoy),

• Inflatable boat for emergency situations.

This is not the first visit to Dalyan and probably it will not be the last one. But I can easily tell that I will choose some other diving club or center.

I will share me and my wife’s bad experience with national and international forums, social medium and rating sites for the benefit of diving community. I am afraid we were seen as cash income in the eyes of Eurodive Dalyan dive center who did not respect divers since they asked and took money for the following dives which were not taken place.

In conclusion; this diving center claims to be proffessional and international diving center, therefore they should take responsibilty and be investigated for their actions by the respected official communities. As an additional information; my wife sent a similar complaint mail to Turkish Underwater Sports Federation (TSSF) too.

I think it is my responsibility to inform diving community about what you might experience by writing you ours with this diving center at Dalyan.

Respectfully,

Levent Yergün