7 Fun Things to Try on a Mundane Scuba Dive

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DiverWire

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A friend told me he quit scuba diving because it got to be mundane and boring.  He informed me he’d seen the same fish at the same dive sites so often that he was convinced that they all recognized him.  At this point I began to realize I had felt the same way at times over the years.  There were days when I was positive that if I closed my eyes I could enjoy a far better dive at my favorite sites in Laguna Beach, Ca. using my memory than if I were to don my gear.  This got me thinking about some of the things my dive buddies and I have done over the years to keep diving fun.1)      Practice our skills.  There are days when there is very little to see underwater.  Rather than cancel, why not practice skills you were taught ...
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I think this is EXACTLY the worst approach....what the friend needs to do, is to get the feeling of "Adventure" back in to his dives....practicing skills and the other suggestions sound like busy work well suited to bore a person with an adventurer's soul.

Most people I know that have been in diving for a long time ( and this purposely excludes dive instructors) , got into either u/w photography or videography, or spearfishing, or exploring deeper wrecks other divers had never seen....with these mission oriented agendas, the divers doing these things never tired of diving. The sight seeing only divers, don't usually last nearly as long.
 
I agree with danvolker. Between spearfishing, lobster hunting, exploring wrecks and videography, my problem is that I want to do too much. I can't imagine ever getting bored.
 
Most people I know that have been in diving for a long time ( and this purposely excludes dive instructors) , got into either u/w photography or videography, or spearfishing, or exploring deeper wrecks other divers had never seen....with these mission oriented agendas, the divers doing these things never tired of diving .



What about the transcendentalists who don't need a reason or (gasp) a mission?
 
What about the transcendentalists who don't need a reason or (gasp) a mission?

I would think the Transcendalists would have a mission....to rebel against the conformity of rules ( read as normative behavior) imposed by PADI and NAUI, as well as rebelling against their indentured servitude to the great corporations - the entities which now control governments, the News medias, and control even the very fabric of our culture today. They rebel over all that masquerades as freedom in America today........

But....did you mean Existentialists? If so, they as a group should not be allowed to dive, since you can never be sure that they believe what is happening to them, is real ... :)
 
I could (and often do) enjoy myself as much out in the sand as I do on the most beautiful reef. Spotting crabs buried in the sand, looking for yellow headed jaw fish or garden eels, spotted snake eels, there is a whole nother world out there. I have only been bored on guided dives, waiting for photographers.
 
That might be an interesting article. Someday, I'd like to find out.
dang.jpg
 
I am with Dan

When my oldest son was little we took many walks in the woods. To amuse ourselves we started looking for toadstools. To our surprise some were yellow, some orange, all sorts of shapes and sizes. Each time we walked the same trail we were on the look for something new.

For scuba diving I took up two things. One was photography. Not serious but I always have a camera along. The other is hunting for nudibranchs. Why, well people do not usually look for nudibranchs in NC. Most have only seen one kind. I am up to 5, a couple new to the region. Sort of like prospecting for gold. You enjoy the dive but keep an eye out for the glint of gold and every once in a while you see it.

Read a technical article once about experiments training rats. They found if they were rewarded every time, if the reward was cut off, they soon quit the trained activity. If they were never rewarded, they never learned. But it they were rewarded just once in a while, they took longer to learn, but once they did they would keep pulling on the bar even if they only rarely got a pellet. Figure that describes me and my nudi hunt.

I have added frog fish to the keep an eye out list this year. Rare but I have heard they are around.
 
I would think the Transcendalists would have a mission....to rebel against the conformity of rules ( read as normative behavior) imposed by PADI and NAUI, as well as rebelling against their indentured servitude to the great corporations - the entities which now control governments, the News medias, and control even the very fabric of our culture today. They rebel over all that masquerades as freedom in America today........

But....did you mean Existentialists? If so, they as a group should not be allowed to dive, since you can never be sure that they believe what is happening to them, is real ... :)



I must have meant "re-immersionists".... in the primordial, amniotic soup. There is no real existing "group" of existntialists.
 
Did your friend go exotic places he hadn't been before? Did he try diving with Randy Jordan with Emerald Charters out of Jupiter on shark feed dives? Tiger Beach diving via live-aboard in the Bahamas? See the great whites cage diving off Guadalupe? Shore dive Bonaire or Curacao? What about wreck diving with numbers of sand tiger sharks out of North Carolina? Try the goliath grouper aggregation or lemon shark migration out of Jupiter? Hit some of the big name wreck sites in the world? Perhaps enjoy some 'land and sea' experiences mixing topside activities with diving in Dominica? Did he try the Mexican cenotes some people love? Did he try the diversity of the Philippines?

If you dive the same place till the fish recognize you, yeah, that could get old.

My problem is that I don't anticipate a sufficient remaining life expectancy to dive all the places I want to dive as thoroughly as I want to dive them. I don't expect to exhaust the Caribbean in my lifetime, and with a family (pre-toddler daughter, and I'm 45 with little tolerance for long flights), I doubt I'll ever hit Bali, the Maldives or Palau. I'm probably too cheap for Wakatobi even if it were practical to go.

Diving got boring? Well, maybe if I were broke and could only dive the quarry...

Richard.

---------- Post added November 3rd, 2014 at 08:06 PM ----------

But it they were rewarded just once in a while, they took longer to learn, but once they did they would keep pulling on the bar even if they only rarely got a pellet. Figure that describes me and my nudi hunt.

Random intermittent reward schedules tend to produce the most lasting conditioned response; once you take away the reward entirely, it takes longer for the response to have 'extinction.' After all, the animal is not only conditioned to pursue the reward, but to tolerate and disregard disappointment as it seeks to do so.

Put another way, have you ever seen a casino slot machine?

Richard.
 
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