Are you a flyer or a looker?

[SeaHorse81]

I found this quote last night on a different thread about how people feel when they dive:

Someone proposed the thesis that there are two kinds of divers - flyers and lookers. The lookers look for the coloured fish, the flyers just want to float weightless and the pretty fish are a bonus. Flyers tend to become Zen-masters of calm and will enjoy dives immensely while being at a loss to tell others everything that they saw.

I am most definitely a flyer, and now understand why I've never been able to contribute as much as many others to post-dive discussions. Diving for me is about being in the environment, free to move in any way I want, or able to just hover in space. With the exception of bigger critters, I don't get that focused on what I see when I'm there.

So I'm curious about others on the board: Are you mostly a flyer or mostly a looker?

 

[Steve50]

Flyer until I find a Seahorse

 

[SteveAD]

I am a bisexual diver diver. I fly while looking, and pride myself on finding the hard to see critters like decorator crabs.

 

[TSandM]

I am very definitely both, but at deepest heart, I think I'm a flyer. I suspect most cave divers are.

 

[Kingpatzer]

I dive to experience diving. And I look at stuff as part of the experience. Can't I be both?

 

[vladimir]

I'm more of a glider than a flyer. If there's a current, I'm happy to go along for the ride; if not, I'm a looker (in every sense of the word ).

 

[piikki]

Flyer. I enjoy looking but I also get overwhelmed in environments that offer a lot of stimulation. Like tropical waters for multiple days are a bit much for me, just too much going on. After few days I just want couple of dives of not concentrating on observation but just 'being in the water'.

 

[Ana]

Over the years I've gone back and forth being both, probably being more than just a flyer or a looker.

Where would you fit hunters and photographers? how about the sheep herders? or the gear nuts? or so many others....
The wonders of diving right there. People may try to nicely package it and define it within certain boundaries... sounds poetic at the beginning but when one thinks it through, defining divers is not that clean.

As far as being at loss telling other what I saw? for many years I only saw big fish, little fish, turtles, shell creatures, and treasures. Eventually you end identifying 1 or 2 of the animals u see, before you know it, you can tell the name of almost every animal or weed in your local dives, it just happens without much effort, it only takes more dives.

What continues being very difficult for me is to tell a non diver how it feels, and why I rather be diving than pretty much anything else.

 

[Walter]

Did you see that "little blue fish?"

 

[Ana]

Did you see that "little blue fish?"

yeah .... make fun of me.
Last liveaboard we did with Moo, I'm going crazy looking for indigos and the second day I see Kiti's pictures, they saw dozens!!!! After 6 days I saw a total of ZERO indigos