I asked for more details and consequences for diving beyond 30 ft and was told I might experience disorientation, key word might. At any rate I will definitely test the possibility.
If your ears equalize at different times, then your sense of orientation / balance could be temporarily disturbed. It has to do with the balance organs that exist one in each inner ear.
Something like that happened to me once. My eyes saw two different pictures, and it felt wild to wait for the Two Different Horizons to stabilize and merge into one picture
Depending on your level of experience you might feel safer at shallow depth if something similar would happen to you. It is just disorientation, it does not affect breathing, but it can be scary.
The depth between 0 and 30 feet is also the best possible depth to practice equalizing. You have to do it a lot and you will gain experience.
Diving at shallow depth can be enjoyable. You are weightless of course. There might be fish among the reeds or algae swaying with the swell. Tree roots casting shadows. Many lakes and rivers are shallow. If you want to do something productive instead of relaxing then recovery diving is possible and common in shallow water. People tend to drop things from boats at the pier... Even some very advanced types of dives can be done in the shallows, such as ice diving or even cave diving! And then we have underwater photography, underwater modeling, historical diving, shallow wrecks... countless choices for shallow water.
It is true though that many open water dive trips are done to 60 feet (advanced dives even deepr), but options do exist. You just have to find them!
Just to give you an idea:
- Shallow diving between the continents (Iceland):
- Ice diving, not deep but advanced: