The Argonauts John or Jean Francois ???????

[arcFlash]

As long as Terry jacked the thread...

If you look for a root cause (and I didn't know Aubineau or Provost) it would likely be limited local diving. So many divers are brainwashed into thinking Square Lake has something to offer. For a training tub I'll agree you need the place but past that, more has to be said about local resources. Terry and I have probably been in more lakes then most anyone and the vis is reasonable in many. That is, most dive shops only dive with students and in Square Lake, even ice is held at Square and that's a terrible place for ice class.

I understand that 'fun dives' don't offer any ROI so that's not the answer. If shops collected information on sites it would be a reason to stop in and ask about where to go. If shops helped divers find shore dives and offered some intel and got a dive report back it would be a valuable resource. I say this from experience in that I was confused long ago about why we could only dive Square and Elmo (by boat) when we had so many lakes. Everyone I asked about were to go told me Square or Perch. You can shore dive about anything if you look for an entry and pull a flag(s), use a compass and make every effort to avoid boat traffic.

Lastly, everyone is so fixated on visibility. You need about 8-10 feet for a good dive. With the chance of catching hell from other... I just got back from Bonaire and you may already know I didn't care for it all that much. So I told my brother "I'm not seeing anything." He said, stop looking for big stuff and start looking real close for all the small stuff. I said, then why did I come all this way for 80ft vis if I spend the whole time looking for small stuff within 2 feet? People talk about vis but don't need it, that's very odd. I would rather be the first diver to scour the bottom of some brown lake than wait my turn to see a scorpion fish.