DogDiver
Contributor
Unless you have $$$$$$ and balls of steel. Best find another hobby.
Exploration Diving
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OP
- Does the concept of exploration dives attract you?
- Would you pay a liveaboard charter fee to be on an exploration project?
I am more likely to track down someone with a really good sidescan or magnetometer or ROV. Or tromp through the bush looking for karst and caves.
- Have you been on any underwater exploration projects?
- Any planned?
Exploration in BC often takes an entirely different sport just to get to the water. This was 4 weeks ago, nearly 300m of vertical single rope work (and 1km of hiking with 7 sherpas gear hauling for 1 diver) to descend to the dive in Arch Cave
beester
Contributor
I'm not an explorer. The closest I've come to "exploration" was diving a wreck that was unknown by us diving from a zodiac. It was a German WW1 sub. We dived it a couple of times to identify it, and we truly felt like "explorers", because it wasn't identified at that time on wrecksite (www.wrecksite.eu).
Later we found out that in fact it was already discovered a couple of years ago by THE specialist of our North Sea wrecks, Tomas Termote, who discovered a lot of wrecks, and just recently discovered another unknown Uboot in 2017. He really is an explorer. (The Hunt for the Notorious U-Boat UB-29 | History | Smithsonian Magazine)
However what I experienced when it comes to exploration type of dives, is that most (technical) divers don't want to do that. They have limited time and want a "guarantee of success", they don't want to spend precious trimix and a full weekend diving a "potential wreck" that could turn out to be nothing than rubble. We had a really active GUE group, working together on documenting north sea wrecks (historic research, video documentary, 3D mapping) involving the government (our research and documentary were later added to the shipping museum in Ostend), but when we asked if they wanted to join diving 2 potential "unknowns" the feedback was very lackluster. In the end we couldn't get enough people together to dive it.
The same when you see (most) technical divers at divebases all over the world, in the end it's just touristy stuff they are diving, but a bit deeper. Same for caves by the way. The only time I had a different experience was by hapchange a base owner I know very well in Croatia had discovered a new wreck, and we dived quite a lot on that "unknown" to see if we could discover it's identity... in the end we could not, it was discovered a couple of months later...
Below a bit of the vibe of what diving a north sea sub feels like ;-) Filmed by a good budy of mine.
Later we found out that in fact it was already discovered a couple of years ago by THE specialist of our North Sea wrecks, Tomas Termote, who discovered a lot of wrecks, and just recently discovered another unknown Uboot in 2017. He really is an explorer. (The Hunt for the Notorious U-Boat UB-29 | History | Smithsonian Magazine)
However what I experienced when it comes to exploration type of dives, is that most (technical) divers don't want to do that. They have limited time and want a "guarantee of success", they don't want to spend precious trimix and a full weekend diving a "potential wreck" that could turn out to be nothing than rubble. We had a really active GUE group, working together on documenting north sea wrecks (historic research, video documentary, 3D mapping) involving the government (our research and documentary were later added to the shipping museum in Ostend), but when we asked if they wanted to join diving 2 potential "unknowns" the feedback was very lackluster. In the end we couldn't get enough people together to dive it.
The same when you see (most) technical divers at divebases all over the world, in the end it's just touristy stuff they are diving, but a bit deeper. Same for caves by the way. The only time I had a different experience was by hapchange a base owner I know very well in Croatia had discovered a new wreck, and we dived quite a lot on that "unknown" to see if we could discover it's identity... in the end we could not, it was discovered a couple of months later...
Below a bit of the vibe of what diving a north sea sub feels like ;-) Filmed by a good budy of mine.
Some people might think that exploration diving requires trimix, several stage/deco bottles, a rebreather, a DPV or two, and a SUV. For some sorts of exploration diving this is true (deep penetration). I believe though that exploration is more of a mindset. There are more than one final frontier.
Think about
To give you an idea I will link two videos:
#1 a confined space straight from my nightmares; this video shows the dive site; the next day I went in there in a drysuit and it was TIGHT; I still wonder how I coped with it mentally. I found a continuation. At low ground water level (next spring) it was penetrable without dive gear, but incredibly tight of course.
#2 a place where I squeezed myself into a narrow vertical crack in an attempt to find new passage; I feared line traps for my dear life (it was really that serious); it was really really scary. This video is from a preceding dive. I have no footage from the push attempt as I had other things to think about.
Think about
- arctic diving (read e.g. the proceedings of the Polar diving workshop)
- archaeological diving
- biological diving (e.g. making an inventory of species)
- sump diving
- underwater survey and positioning
- zero viz sites
- previously undived spots
To give you an idea I will link two videos:
#1 a confined space straight from my nightmares; this video shows the dive site; the next day I went in there in a drysuit and it was TIGHT; I still wonder how I coped with it mentally. I found a continuation. At low ground water level (next spring) it was penetrable without dive gear, but incredibly tight of course.
#2 a place where I squeezed myself into a narrow vertical crack in an attempt to find new passage; I feared line traps for my dear life (it was really that serious); it was really really scary. This video is from a preceding dive. I have no footage from the push attempt as I had other things to think about.
I'm sure there are liveaboards which are hired for actual exploration projects.Spot on!
Cavers know it best
If the website says
"Join one of our six exploration weeks in the Galapagos in 2023!"
that's not exploring diddly to me even if some of the sites are new or comparatively unknown.
beester
Contributor
Well sometimes it does exist. Give you an example...
It's says in the title it's exploration... ;-)
And yes it is... it's sort of a liveaboard (it's organised by a divebase, you pay a fee for gas and the boat), meaning you sleep in your sleepingbag on deck or they go back to land. It's only CCR because it's not possible to refill for OC dives at that depth, the wrecks are potential wrecks, so there is uncertainty for everybody involved. They've been doing it since 2009 I believe and have discovered really interesting new wrecks.
Big kudos to them!
lermontov
Contributor
you can steer the direction of a charter if you fill up the seats with enough of your buddies to have a say - my group of diver friends have paid for a LOB in the solomons to dive the Atlanta and they agreed to set aside 3 days to do it, we regularly dive in the solomon's and charter boats to go where we want - last trip we discovered new stuff in part because the operators also keen explorers
Yes, I am always interested in exploring.
Had 1 chance in my life, I stayed in a room from airbnb and the owner had its own cenote. So I was allowed to do 1 dive there. He just wanted to have some pictures. There was a big cave behind the entrance, clear, white with some stalagtites. But a lot of perculation and sometimes the bubbles made fall rocks.
The owner was happy with his pictures and I dove a site that still has hidden stuff. Real exploration he did not want.
Paying for a liveaboard as exploration depends. As already said if they only need new divesites and let you pay, then not. If there is also interest in history, etc, then share costs etc. The Krnica one looked nice.
I had booked a few years ago a trip to dive only new POI's. The owner of the boat and diveshop was a real explorer and he needed divers for these new POI's. It was a trip between 80 and 120m depth. Sadly he died on a solo dive (als exploration dive) a 2 months before our trip was planned.
Had 1 chance in my life, I stayed in a room from airbnb and the owner had its own cenote. So I was allowed to do 1 dive there. He just wanted to have some pictures. There was a big cave behind the entrance, clear, white with some stalagtites. But a lot of perculation and sometimes the bubbles made fall rocks.
The owner was happy with his pictures and I dove a site that still has hidden stuff. Real exploration he did not want.
Paying for a liveaboard as exploration depends. As already said if they only need new divesites and let you pay, then not. If there is also interest in history, etc, then share costs etc. The Krnica one looked nice.
I had booked a few years ago a trip to dive only new POI's. The owner of the boat and diveshop was a real explorer and he needed divers for these new POI's. It was a trip between 80 and 120m depth. Sadly he died on a solo dive (als exploration dive) a 2 months before our trip was planned.
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