Exploration Diving

[Ghost95]

I enjoy the spirit even if it is exploration dive light.

Just walking up to a body of water that I've never been in before and that I've never heard of anyone diving before is an adventure. It may be a bay or a beach or even a river. You never know what challenges are waiting or what's there to be found or seen. If I've never talked to someone who's already dove there and if I can't find any info about previous divers then it's exploration.

My favorite trips to run on the boat were to go to an area of natural bottom and dropping on the first interesting thing that showed up on the bottom machine. Exploration light but still exploration. I love it.

 

[100days-a-year]

Spent years running down LORAN TDs. I imagine I've dove a few wrecks no one else had before and countless hard bottom areas.
The other 90% is documenting the find and identifying it. Diving part is easy.

 

[cathal]

Exploration dives are very attractive, but they’re very fatiguing. Pre and post dive work is a lot. Managing support teams is a lot. Doing the dives is a lot. There’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of risk, and there’s a lot of stress during the dive. Financial burden. Time away from home. It’s just a lot and tough to sustain week after week, month after month, year after year.

I’ve spent MANY dives on both sides of the exploration equation, as a support diver and as a member of the exploration team. There’s nothing else like it, and I find it more rewarding than just about anything else, but man is it a lot. I think this has been the challenge for anyone who wants to explore or be a part of exploration. If it was easy, everyone could do it.

But it’s not. It’s ******* hard.

it’s unlikely that I’d pay for a liveaboard unless the project was very unique. There’s certain wrecks I’d be interested in, though.

Completely agree. I had the privilege of diving a virgin wreck a couple of years back that turned out to be what we had suspected, an operational WW1 Sub. The sea state on that day was very lumpy to put it mildly, it was 40 miles out - about 4hours of a journey in those conditions, with 3-4 hours on site, we were all battered, tired and soaked by the time we got back to shore after about 11-12 hours at sea. But was it worth it?? Absolutely.

 

[admikar]

I would love to be a part of exploration divng. OTH, I would not pay full price for liveaboard which will be using my findings (if any) to include it into its bussines plan.

 

[beldridg]

Spent years running down LORAN TDs. I imagine I've dove a few wrecks no one else had before and countless hard bottom areas.
The other 90% is documenting the find and identifying it. Diving part is easy.

I will echo this. We just identified the SH-3A Sea King I recently wrote about (link below). The wreck is at 210 feet and I conducted two dives on it with a combined bottom time of probably 40 minutes.

We didn't track our time, but between @California Diver and I, the combined travel, planning, research, and writing process was likely over 100 hours.

SH-3A Sea King (San Diego — 210 fsw)

It can be very rewarding, but you also spend a lot of time chasing ghosts and diving rocks and mud to find something. I personally don't mind that but many people don't want to spend their 'holiday' looking for something and possibly only find rocks. Modern technology has made it more likely that when you splash it will be something interesting, but certainly not guaranteed (unless you start getting into the realm of ROV/AUV/etc.).

- brett

 

[beldridg]

Diving where there is a high probability that no human has been before was a common motivation in the early days of the sport. Divers working to make a name for themselves in the recreational dive industry strove to become members of The Explorers Club. Many became professional underwater photographers.

• Does the concept of exploration dives attract you?
• Would you pay a liveaboard charter fee to be on an exploration project?
• Have you been on any underwater exploration projects?
• Any planned?

"Exploration" can be as little as searching for undiscovered dive sites to underwritten science or salvage projects. Let the sea stories begin.

For sure and I would very likely pay to go on an exploration project. I would say that at least 50% of my dives this year have been searching for new wrecks here in Southern California. We are documenting what we find here:

SoCal Dive – Wrecked in my rEvo

So far this year, we have identified the Nightingale, the Mercator, and most recently the SH-3A Sea King and we have corrected the identification on at least one other airplane and the fun continues....

- brett

 

[BRT]

What was the shop? It might only be "Exploration Lite", but it sounds like fun.

Dive Home. Nice couple with two cute little girls.

 

[Akimbo]

You could probably dive off the shore most places along the California Coast between Pt Conception and Big Sur and find virgin dive spots as late as 1970. You could probably do the same today with a decent size boat. That part of the coast is pretty challenging given the high cliffs and lack of protected harbors. Almost anywhere divers like @Sam Miller III dove in the 1950s was virgin.

Depth is also a factor. There are plenty of places off populated coasts below 50M/165' that are very likely virgin. I must admit, the sense of "adventure" in diving is much more difficult (and expensive) today.

 

[lowwall]

You could probably dive off the shore most places along the California Coast between Pt Conception and Big Sur and find virgin dive spots as late as 1970. You could probably do the same today with a decent size boat. That part of the coast is pretty challenging given the high cliffs and lack of protected harbors. Almost anywhere divers like @Sam Miller III dove in the 1950s was virgin.

Depth is also a factor. There are plenty of places off populated coasts below 50M/165' that are very likely virgin. I must admit, the sense of a "adventure" in diving is much more difficult (and expensive) today.

I could dive off a boat pretty much anywhere off Chicago and it would be new ground. But the prospect of all that sand/silt isn't very exciting. There are hundreds of wrecks out there, but only the occasional timber is left of most of them. It's so shallow that standard practice used to be to dynamite wrecks that weren't worth salvaging so they wouldn't be a navigation hazard.

 

[Gene]

I've loved "exploring" my whole life. I think it's something people are born with that compels them to do it. Luckily we lived overseas in Europe and Taiwan, in addition to various states like California while my brother and I were growing up. We racked up countless hours exploring old W.W. II bunkers, castle ruins, mines and even a Greco-Roman bath near Naples, Italy that has a tunnel called the Oracle of the Dead. I was 14 for that one, and I still dream about it.
I haven't been blessed so far with diving virgin wrecks or cave passages yet, although we thought we found one at one point, only to eventually find part of an old buried line.... It was still fun though!
I was asked a couple years ago to join the Explorer's Club for my underwater photography work, but politely declined as I felt I wasn't a bona-fide explorer yet. There's still time hopefully...