It's actually very effective at stopping people touching things. They
have to get bouyancy correct, and can no longer crawl across the
bottom.

Pete S.

I had heard that the way to get around it in Cozumel, if the dive op
insists on glove-less diving, is to claim a skin condition.  My last
trip to Coz, when Dive Paradise allowed us knives but not gloves, I
didn't bother with them on the first dive and nobody said anything to
me on subsequent dives when I did wear my gloves probably because they
realized I had my buoyancy control in check.

The dive op we used for most of our dives in Grand Cayman last month
said nothing about my gloves, but when we showed up at Ocean Frontiers
for one day of diving the East End, as soon as I got my gloves out the
DM told me it was "against the law" to wear them.  I said "bullshit"
and he then offered to show me a copy of the "law". I didn't want to
cause too much of a disturbance, so I relented.  But, due to that
order, and a couple other things that bugged me about Rodales Number
One Dive Op, my tip was withheld that day.

When we were diving in Tahiti in February, I was surprised that so
many of the east coasters didn't even bring gloves.  They were so used
to telling their students not to wear gloves that they had also
abandoned them.  It's a lot different on the west coast, where one of
the few times I've dove gloveless I got a lash of a jellyfish tentacle
across my hand that took several months to fully heal (after I thought
it had gone away in a few weeks, it reappeared during a trip to the
tropics).  The few non-east-coasters on the trip were very happy we
brought gloves since the Tahiti diving involved a lot of intentional
coral crawling in the 6-knot passes.  My gloves got very dirty.  The
gloveless got very bloody.