Felon Diver

Chances are you didn’t do a Google search for “Felon Diver” because you’ve heard of the program and wanted to know more. Most likely you saw the link and curiousity got the best of you. You want to know what it is. If you’ve been convicted of a felony and thought there was something here for you, I must offer you my most sincere apologies. It is certainly not my intent to piss off felons, but the “Felon Diver” program isn’t an outreach program.

Let me give you the background first.  I started the program in January of 2006 after two of my dive buddies and I received citations from the Nevada Division of Wildlife (NDoW) for being more than 100 feet from our dive flag during a clean up dive.  That’s right, we were participating in an offical, permitted clean up event and the NDoW cited us not for not having a flag, but for being too far from it. They didn’t take the event into consideration and give us a warning or maybe just ticket one of us, we each got a $107 ticket and a lecture. In addition, they put divers at risk by following our bubbles and driving a twin prop boat through the dive park past dive flags (and divers) to issue the citations to us after we surfaced well within 100 feet of the flag. I suppose we could have gone to court and fought it, but technically they were right.  We broke a rule.  I’d like to see some common sense applied to the enforcement of the rules but who always gets what they want?  The situation was so ludicrous all we could do was laugh at it. As a joke, I issued “Felon Diver” certifictions to the three of us who received the citations.

Word of the “Felon Diver” program got out and I found out this kind of thing happens way more often than you would expect.  I’d like to think my tax money goes to better use than to fund NDoW’s diver harrassment program, but apparently it doesn’t. Let’s just hope they don’t accidentally kill a diver while trying to issue a trivial citation.

So, how do you get your official “Felon Diver” card? It’s real easy.  If you’ve received a scuba related citation, send me a copy of the citation, your contact information, and the $20 administrative fee and I will issue you your official “Felon Diver” card. The citation must be for a scuba related offense.  Getting pulled over for speeding on your way to the dive site or driving your dive boat under the influence doesn’t count. The intent here is not to encourage or condone stupid behavior, but if you find yourself in a situation similar to the one I described above and there’s nothing you can do but laugh at it and move on, here’s your card.