Puerto Rico is a great diving destination. Desecheo, the Parguera Wall, Shacks in Isabela, Culebra and Vieques are all top scuba-diving sites. Mona Island should be one of the top diving destinations in the world. We come to dive every year, and we have a history of using Taino Divers. In the past, we have found the employees to be pleasant and the staff on their boats to be helpful, informative, courteous and very conscious about safety. In fact, two years ago, we booked a trip with Taino and they canceled it because of bad weather and poor scuba-diving conditions. However, this time they showed to be incompetently dangerous. We requested Nitrox and we couldn't check the tanks till we were in the boat. To our dismay, upon our arrival to the dive sites, the Nitrox tanks had totally illegible old labels, nor did they provide with equipment to test the mix, thus breaking basic Nitrox protocol. The dive master said that he thought it was a 30% mix. The tanks looked so bad, that we now wonder if it was Nitrox at all. Currently, Taino mixes divers and snorkelers in the same boat, which was surprising since the dive sites are more than 30 feet deep and there is usually heavy currents. In our case, there was only one dive master and one boat captain to take care of 12 divers and snorkelers. The briefing to both divers and snorkelers was superficial and uninformative. Snorkelers were not required to wear life-vest, even though the sites were deep. We were very surprised at the very heavy currents in the area, since the dive masters didn't mention anything about currents. One snorkeler was swept to the open ocean, so the boat had to rescue him and left two scuba divers -without notice- in open waters. It was a horrible and frightening experience. The "lunch" was terrible -particularly considering that Taino owns a restaurant: a bag of chips and a pasta "salad" (cold unseasoned boiled pasta, black beans and canned corn). In sum, Desecheo is a great site for experienced divers, but try to avoid Taino. We have been fortunate to dive all around the world: Bali, Great Barrier, South Africa, Bahamas, Hawaii, Thailand, Philippines, and others. Puerto Rico has the potential of being developed as a very good diving destination, so it is sad that diving operators like Taino damage PRs reputation. Hopefully a responsible scuba- diving operator like Scuba Dogs, PR Technical Diving Center or Aquatica in Isabela will resume their dive trips to Desecheo and Mona Island -the Galapagos of the Caribbean- again. read more