I see that someone else has had an unnerving experience with Frenchie's on Caye Caulker in Belize recently, and I'll second the concern. We recently went to the Blue Hole with them, which is a 130-foot deep dive, right at the limits of AOW, as I understand it. A number of the other divers were clearly not experienced enough to be doing the dive--a lot of thrashing around, coming up underneath or over other divers, etc. On the boat I was surprised to find that at least half of them (and actually, everyone I spoke with) didn't have their AOW, and a few of them hadn't been diving in a long time. It was a nice expedition, but considering Belize's inflated diving prices, we shouldn't be diving in groups of 12 with beginners.
So here's my question: Is there any way what Frenchie's is doing--taking OW divers down to 130 meters--is legit? It seems like a violation of basic safety to me. I suppose it's possible that they charge OW divers more and call it a deep dive class, but I didn't see any education going on, and they brought us all down as a single group of 12.
