Many people know that I was working there for 2.5 years. I stopped working at Atlantis Beach Resort in Dumaguete August 07, or should I say I got stopped as I have an own Character and don’t fit in the Diving MC Donald’s policy of the owners.
I never said anything bad about Atlantis and the value for money, but what I know, hear and read on different SCUBA diving boards is just scary and life-threatening.
In September I was contacted to help with some information about the altitude of the waterfalls. Putting my 2 Cents of knowledge together and the public post on DumagueteInfo.com there must have been a Decompression problem. Getting in contact with the person I found out that the customer-caring management sent them to 650 – 700 meters altitude after 2 weeks of “hardcore”-diving (up to 4 dives a day) and two dives in the morning.
One of the guests suffered the next day during the flight from decompression-problems and had to extend the stop-over in Singapore for treatment in the recompression chamber.
Around the same time Chef Guenther gave me a note that some Star-Divemaster went to Apo Island did a 42 meter dive and after a quite short surface interval a 46 meter dive. Those dives were no technical dives. Back on the Boat the diver recognized some itchy skin and red spots, a very clear sign for decompression problems. The responsible person on the boat was the Diveshop manager of Atlantis Dumaguete and a IDC-Staff Instructor from Puerto Galera. The education-level of those should be high enough for some proper treatment, but at least Guenther the Chef (not diving since 3 years) knew what to do. Other Philippino Instructors got fired for doing things like that, even there was no accident or problem involved. That probably never happens if you are the little puppie of one ow the owners.
Even more strange that Atlantis is promoting “SAFETY FIRST”, listening to that stories and knowing quite some facts I consider that Karabaw Poo (the philippino version of Bullsh…)
If it comes to American groups it is a hunt for enormous tip’s. Many safety-rules got thrown overboard.
30 Meter/100 feet limit… only with non-americans.
Only non-decompression dives… no problem, we multilevel up and spend 20 minutes in the shallow anyway.
Very amusing, that divers from the US visiting the Philippines are almost all PADI divers aged 50 and above who are not in the best physical conditions anymore…
Most European divers are CMAS, VDST or equivalent educated. In that systems diver learn to make dives below 40 meters and deco-procedures, but they can’t do that dives in Dumaguete, at least not in Atlantis. Maybe they should also give 100 $ tip at the beginning of the week, would make thing easier for them.
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