Anyone dived at a site with no land visible in all directions?

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I'm planning whale shark diving from Placencia next spring and I expect it's far enough that no land will be visible. The shop says it's open ocean with no bottom in sight. I believe it's with a DM and group with no chance of getting lost. At least I plan on sticking close.

My second open water dive and my two buddy's first ocean dives were doing the whale shark dives. Fortunately, we all had great buoyancy control. Air management was another issue, though. Still is. Anywho..., I remember being able to see bottom on one of the dives. It was a ways below us, but viz was great. Make sure you're diving within five days of the full moon. We missed seeing the sharks by one day.
 
Naw, I'm just old - and there was a lot of tension between the US and Cuba back then, and the military was paying close attention to the situation.

Just before we saw the submarine surface in the Bahamas, I was on deck and watching the other US Navy vessel that had been hanging around, and I said to a crew member "What kind of boat is that?" When he answered "Sub tender" I said "A sub tender, what for? There's no submarines around here!"

That was a very dumb thing to say but we had just been diving and I hadn't seen any submarines hanging around - but we were at the top of a wall and they could have been holding submarine races down there for all I knew!

Wow, was I surprised when the water started churning and suddenly a sub popped to the surface!

Tongue of the Ocean is a deep trench in the Bahamas between Andros and New Providence. The US Navy does acoustic testing of submarines there and has been for decades, even before I was rode them in the '60's.

The "submarine tender" the crewman pointed out was more likely an auxiliary vessel used for safety, recording data, and communications. An actual sub tender is the size of a cruise ship and rarely leaves port.



Bob
 
You don't even need to be in the ocean to be out of sight of land, for many Great Lakes sites you can't see land.

Many folks seem to think the Great Lakes are little ponds. Hardly. They're called "Inland Seas" for a reason.
 
A few very remote sites that come to mind I've done over the years are:

North Carolina shipwrecks (natural, not artificial) : est 25 - 50 miles offshore.

Texas Flower Gardens/Stetson Bank : est 110 miles offshore.

Socorro Islands (Mexico/East Pacific Ocean) est 250 miles offshore. The 'islands' are residual extinct volcanic peaks, pretty much all sheer vertical rocks/cliffs heavily eroded by the sea, cannot be climbed by divers, uninhabited, so they are useless for emergency landing/rescue purposes.

I've done many a live aboard out-of-sight of land, but not bothering to list those here, just listing a few that were 'substantially' far from land, out in the vast ocean.
 
I dive in Papua New Guinea a LOT, mostly on liveaboards. Most diving is on seamounts out in the Bismark Sea. They don't break the surface and there is no land in sight. Sometimes, there can be quite a current, too. You either need to be a decent diver or LISTEN to the dive guide.
 
All the dives we did from Lizard Island were far enough out that we didn’t see land. In The Galapagos we could see land but it was neither accessible or in any way inviting. Diving in both locations was totally awesome.
 
Yes, 500km from the nearest land and 4000m from the nearest bottom.
 
That's what I'm talking about :wink: did you encounter anything interesting?
Tiny little jellys from abt 70 ft. It was a midocean (Atlantic) collecting expedition.
 
That's generally been my experience too - 5 days under sail in the Indian Ocean leaving Thailand heading for Perth I spent an hour hoping for something...saw a freaky fast swimming eely thingy at depth - I saw one jellyfish and nada...nothing...
 
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