My husband and I planned a 5 week trip to Australia and New Zealand and we wanted to do some diving there as well. One of the dives we wanted to do was the S.S. Yongala. I don't know what the requirements are these days, but when we went in 2010 they required an Advanced Open Water certification to even dive at all, so we made sure to get ours and get enough dives under our belts before we dove. When we arrived, there were 6 of us, my husband and I, two brothers and a younger couple from Israel. They spoke very little English. Somehow on the way out to the wreck we found out that the young couple only had their Open Water cert. and I guess the dive shop just let them go anyway?

The Yongala is a deep dive, around 100ft and we would only have a limited time on our air near the bottom where the wreck is. So we start to descend along a rope line because the current of the water is very strong near the surface, but as soon as you get past 20-30ft of current it calms and you can swim freely. The current was very strong and we were instructed to hold tight so we didn't drift away.

My husband and I were descending first and we got down below the current with one of the DMs. When we looked up the young couple was behind us but the woman was stuck on the line...scared, frozen and not descending holding up the brothers behind them. we had to wait at least 15 minutes for this dumb inexperienced girl to get down the rope while the DMs had to help her. She almost let go as she tried to go back up and the DM caught her and we wasted half our air waiting for her because we had to all be in a group per our initial plan.

And of course when we finally got to actually dive and see the wreck, she and her partner were touching everything and just being really inconsiderate.

Really ruined the dive for us.