A Scuber delivery driver unloads two sets of scuba diving equipment for divers at Blacktip Island’s Spider Bight Thursday. (photo courtesy of Piers ‘Doc’ Plank)
A Blacktip Island entrepreneur announced Wednesday the introduction of what he is calling a ‘scuba dive gear-share app’ designed to provide rental scuba gear within minutes to shore divers anywhere on the small Caribbean island.
“This addresses a growing need on Blacktip,” Piers ‘Doc’ Plank said. “People lollygag to the beach, realize it’s a perfect spot to dive, but they don’t have any scuba gear so they’re out of luck. But now, they just type their info into our app, and we drive the gear out to them.
“We’re calling it ‘Scuber,” Plank said. “It gets their location from GPS, and folks can track our delivery vehicle in real time. Then, after the dive, they just tap the ‘done’ tab, leave the gear by the roadside and we come pick it up.”
Early testers praised the service.
“We entered what gear we needed and our sizes, and 10 minutes later we were wading into the water, ready to dive,” Palometa Fischer said. “We wanted to travel with just carry on, and weren’t sure we would dive at all. Then we biked along the east coast, and the sea was so calm and beautiful, we knew we had to give it a go.
“Scuber had two complete sets of dive gear to us in less than 15 minutes,” Fischer said. “After the dive, we just toweled off, left the kit for them to pick up and biked back to the resort. Worked great, and we’d certainly use them again. It’s the perfect service.”
Scuber is not without its detractors, though.
“It took them half an hour to get to us, when the app said 3 minutes,” Kenny Chromis said. “That’s a long time on the roadside, baking in the hot sun. Then, when we hooked up the gear, the regs free-flowed and the BCDs wouldn’t hold air. And because of some kind of legal gobbledy-gook in the terms of service, they wouldn’t give us a refund. They get zero stars, across the board.”
The service has also come under fire from island scuba charter businesses.
“Doc’s siphoning off divers that would otherwise be on our boats, in our rental gear,” Eagle Ray Divers’ operations manager Ger Latner said. “It’s legal, but it’s dirty pool. Blacktip’s too small for this sort of thing. Folks in the dive industry, well, we won’t be buying, or promoting, any of his Bamboo You dive gadgets anymore. And we damn sure won’t be working as his gear delivery drivers.”
Plank was unconcerned by the criticism.
“This is something new. People are always afraid of that,” he said. “Sure, we’re still working out the kinks, but people have to understand this is the wave of the future. Instead of criticizing Scuber, dive ops ought to be figuring out ways to incorporate it with their existing dive product. First one to do that stands to make a ton of money.”
The Blacktip Times 