South Florida Diving Headquarters — Local services in Pompano Beach

My experience this week with South Florida Diving Headquarters (SFDH), Pompano Beach, warrants a review to share with those of you who dive.

I am a diver who has ignored my desire and the fun diving experiences for several long years. I felt a refresher event was needed to prepare for more future fun and safe diving experiences.

After meeting Paula T. on a casual boat trip to tour the Hillsboro Lighthouse a few weeks ago, I signed up with SDFH for this “Refresher Diving Event” with her as my private instructor. I learned later this is her desired approach for diving instruction. The brief meeting with Paula, quickly revealed to me, that she was a well experienced diving instructor who gave a very favorable impression of being very personable, exercised patience with people, and displayed a professional competence with cheerful and fun approaches. I knew she was the kind of diving instructor I wanted to assist me in re-familiarizing me with safe and great future diving experiences.

After a brief pool exercise of basic diving and safety techniques with the use of their exceptional diving equipment (included), I was extremely impressed with her patience and caring approach in helping me.

The afternoon events included two dives with the SFDH Boat crew who were also very impressive in their verbal desire wanting each of us to have a fun diving experience. The normal safety and emergency procedures were shared, in a sense of humor manner and with a professional approach, contributed to a fun boat ride to the reef and wreck spots that were advertised. The highlights for each spot were shared by Capt. Brad and 1st mate Lisa, with key things to “be sure to see” during our diving experiences, along with duration of diving times to expect.

Paula was extremely attentive to my struggles in preparing for the first dive. Her help was so nice and caring to have, with nothing being left out nor unavailable. Her constant reminders of techniques and practices easily returned to me, all because of her great diving skills and instruction experiences with others.

After completing the 1st dive and some minor adjustments, the 2nd dive, went very smooth and enjoyable beyond my expectations.

Paula also topped off this whole experience by taking pictures and creating a video, during the entire event, almost unnoticeably. Now I have this whole great experience captured for my reminder of this great experience and my happiness in picking her and the performance of the entire staff of SFDH. I highly recommend SFDH and professional and caring staff.

Bob G.,...

This is my first and last time with this dive shop. Here are some of the key concerns I have:

SAFTY - they didn’t give a good safty briefing. The main focus of the whole briefing was to make sure divers would finish the diving within 50min so they can move the the next site or going back to the dock early. There was barely any introduction about the dive sites, safety stop, current condition, the basics every other dive shop that I’ve ever been to would address. They also initially wanted to take us to the shallower reef for the first dive and then to the 70 ft max wreck dive on the second dive, because it would be more convenient to them. We had to complain to the operator to have them take us to the deeper site first. This was very unsafe and irresponsible. I’ve had more than 200 dives, none of the operators l’ve been with before would ever make such ridiculous suggestion. If you are a new diver, avoid this company or pay extra to hire an experienced dive master to go with you.

UNORGANIZED - once you signed in, you are basically on your own to find the tanks, weights, etc. We have friends paid for Nitrox but ended up getting only regular. We were told on the boat that they combined 2 boats which mixed us with some new divers getting their certification, so we cannot go to the wreck dive we signed up for. The operator also complained if we go to the site that we signed up for, it would delay the time to go back. Then why did you have the site available when we signed up? Why didn’t you tell us before we were trapped on the boat?

Overall, it seems that all the crew cares about were their own convenience and getting back to the dock early. They were only nice at the very end when they asked for tips. If I could give 0 star...

I was onboard the Black Pearl on 7/9/22 for a two dive trip in the afternoon and SFDH is one of the most professional and highly organized dive operators I have experienced in my 44 years of professional undersea work, including my time as a US Navy Diver. Their Captains and Crew are highly trained and hand picked to run this operation safety and efficiency. Negative reviews should be analyzed with a critical eye towards our standards of dive training. Any negative reviews that reference running out of air, low oxygen, High current, heavy seas, and long times waiting on the surface should be questioned as these events are not congruent with the high standards of dive training most of our diving community understands. Poorly trained and terrified divers are all too quick to blame their poor training, lack of skills, and inability to take appropriate action in adverse situations on the crew charged with their safety.

The qualified SCUBA instructor and 10 year experienced DM were also on the Black Pearl this day and they clearly don't know what they are doing, are not qualified, and are quick to place blame on everyone except themselves. They talked and did not pay attention during the crew briefings, were mostly seasick, and my observation underwater is that they were poorly trained. I take exception to accusations of racism or minority group alienation towards the SFDH staff and isolation of this group, as I know for a fact the SFDH concerns for ALL diver safety is not influenced by race, creed, sexual orientation, or any other minority status and any accusations to it are baseless and cowardly. Thank you SFDH for a great afternoon of...