Josha van der V.
Google
I wanted to do a casual marine life dive near Porto. I had contact with Rita and she helped me out very well. I was slow to react due to a busy job but still she helped me out very well. In my eyes very professional. Upon arriving in Porto another tour I planned on doing on my vacation (to ceres) got cancelled last minute due to the weather. Rita helped me out last minute to try to arrange a rescheduling for the dive, it did't work out for me but atleast it was very nice and helpful. So the planning phase was very good overall. And props to her. So 5/5 for Diving Portugal.
The dive itself wasn't to great unfortunately. Visibility was very poor (max 1-2m). We planned a double dive and I did only one because of an approaching storm. I am glad they cancelled it due to safety however and I got a refund for that. And although I saw almost no marine life I really did enjoy the experience of diving chocolate milk as it was quite exciting. Though the conditions are not something that should be reviewed here.
The guidance during the dive however was not very good. One point of improvement for Portugal Dive would be to better check the experience of the diver and to do more guidance with that. The dive leader was from Hidrospot/esculo de Merghulo. I asked for a shallow dive with marine life but I got a relatively deep dive (15-22m) with low visibility and somewhat of a current. When I arrived they spoke only Portuguese on the boat. A bit rude in my opinion. I had to ask myself how deep we were going to go and how the visibility was. This is not very professional in my opinion.
As mentioned above the conditions weren't to good and I thought it was rather exciting because it is easy to lose someone with low visibility and relatively high current. Also, it is harder to check on someone in low visibility. Only one small drift away and I could have lost the group entirely. At ca. 22m this is not a nice idea. So I think the dive was a bit above my comfort level in terms of safety. I paid close attention to the diver with lights and still managed to enjoy the dive but I think a line descend and then circle swim in very low visibility to ca. 22m is not something the average hobby diver (read: me) should be doing. I did a small cave/ca 30m overhead dive before on crete and thought it was less exciting than this dive.
I breathed somewhat faster because of this, going through air faster. The leader checked on me ca. three times early in but he did not ask for my air. But I could not really signal him due to low vis. When he finally asked I had less than 50 bar left. He gave me the signal to ascend (which I would have done soon if I didnt get eye contact). Because of this I ascended earlier (and faster) than planned. I felt like I couldn't wait for them too long if I also need air to inflate the BCD to ascend. Afterwards he said somewhat suprised "I lost you?!"
I felt bad for ascending earlier than planned, because I feared they would have gone looking for me if they didn't see me, but I also felt somewhat angry that he didn't check my air earlier and planned accordingly. In my opinion, 50 bar is the boundary for when you need to ascend. I was below that when we started ascending and I did not feel comfortable doing a longer safety stop at 10m. So for the dive school a 3/5. In retrospect it felt rushed and like they just wanted to get over it as quickly as possible.
I am fully aware that diving is 100% your own responsibility, but a little bit more guidance (or even enthusiasm for that matter) when conditions are rough is something I feel a dive instructor/dive leader should be doing.
Seeing as the dive school is 50-75%% of the price you pay for when diving, I felt like a 4/5 is in order in total.
