Club Scuba Doo will be the focal point of the upcoming reality television series ‘Real Divemasters of Blacktip Island, which began filming on the small Caribbean island this week. (photo courtesy of André Héroux)
A new scuba-themed reality television show about the daily lives of Caribbean dive staff on Blacktip Island began filming this week, show producers said.
“We were looking for the bat-shit-craziest island in the Caribbean, and Blacktip blew the metrics off the chart,” Leah Shore said. “It’s like this island has a crazy magnet buried somewhere. Professional actors couldn’t have done better.
“We’re calling it ‘Real Divemasters of Blacktip Island,’ and it’ll show on what goes on at a scuba resort when the guests aren’t around,” Shore said. “Or when the staff thinks they’re not around. There’s a huge untapped TV market of scuba geeks who can’t get enough scuba talk and who love drama.”
The show will focus on dive staff at one of the island’s four dive resorts.
“They liked the look of Eagle Ray Cove, but the staff there’s actually pretty decent to each other,” island mayor Jack Cobia said. “It needed the nastiest staff possible to showcase all the behind the scenes griping, backstabbing and sandbagging that goes on after the guests go to their rooms.
“They picked Club Scuba Doo instead,” Cobia said. “We had no idea, but the staff there’re truly vicious to each other. They’re over-the-top passive-aggressive about their divers, too, when guests turn their backs. The first dailies had jaws dropping. It’s great TV.”
Club Scuba Doo dive staff are enjoying the spotlight.
“They’ve got hidden cameras, body cams, Speedo cams, you name it,” Club Scuba Doo dive manager Finn Kiick said. “We had no idea people’d want to watch this stuff. For us it’s just business as usual, only now we’re gonna be semi-famous for it.
“You work at CSD, you’re in the arena. If it’s your day off, the knives come out,” Kiick said. “But then it’s you doing the stabbing when someone else isn’t there. Yeah, we may hack off some customers, but for every guest we scare off, we’ll gain three more.”
Some on the island worry the show will send the wrong message.
“Our business is hospitality, and here’s a program showing staff being as inhospitable as they can be,” Sandy Bottoms Beach Resort general manager Kay Valve said. “It paints a totally unrealistic picture of life in the scuba industry. Snarky divemasters playing it up for the camera will do more harm than good.”
Kiick was quick to belay those concerns.
“If it jams the boats, where’s the down side?” he said. “Sure, the tank-filling scene was harsh, but it’s all for show. Kay’s just chapped they didn’t choose her resort.
“People’ll come here just to meet the jerks they saw on TV,” he said. “We’re celebrities. As long as they pronounce my name right and tip well, I’m good.”
The Blacktip Times 
Oh, dear. These are highly trained, finely honed professionals that stand between life and death on a daily basis. It is a bit like Picasso hosting finger painting for them taking these knobs out everyday. Stoned and over sexed Picassos mind you. But Picassos nonetheless.