Help with some of the terms

[Cave Diver]

Thanks for the reply...a wall sounds scary..

It's all relative. Some walls are sheer vertical cliffs, while others are more gently angled slopes. Conditions such as visibility, depth, current, etc can vary wildly in different places. It's probably something you should build up to and gain some experience and confidence on dives with hard bottoms before moving on to wall diving, but don't discount it as scary without giving it a fair shake. Wall dives can be some of the most incredible dives you may ever experience.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

Actually, walls are very cool to dive. You just have to be aware of your buoyance control ( like on every dive.) One aspect of wall diving you must experience one day for sure is to look away from the wall out to the "deep blue". The color blue you see on a sunny day at 90 feet down, looking way from a wall, is indescribably beautiful. Two places where I found this to be so: Back wall of Molikini Crater off the coast of Maui, and Columbia or Santa Rosa walls off Cozumel.
DivemasterDennis

 

[Prostardiver]

Thanks for the reply...a wall sounds scary..

Not so bad, but the DM (Divemaster) did get our attention at Cozumel when he explained that the first step is 30 feet, the second step is 60 feet and the third step is 3000 feet. You pay attention to your depth.

 

[Robert Gillcash]

Thanks for the reply...a wall sounds scary..

A wall can be as easy as the wall in your house.
In the area near me there is a wonderful wall, with the bottom varying from 35 to 45 feet. I can spend an hour easily cruising along it, looking at an increddible diversity of coral, plant and animal life. I estimate on a normal dive I see about 1,000 fish. Easily.
Is this scary? Well, um, no. A wall is what you make it to be, scary or not.
This is also my favorite dive site to take my students to for their OW dives 3 & 4. Yeah, it's a wall, yeah, it's not scary.
Don't let the terminology scare you off wall diving. They are great to follow along, you don't have to worry about hitting the bottom or the surface, just cruise along about three or four feet from it and enjoy the view!

 

[DukeAMO]

We did a "mini-wall" shore dive in Grand Cayman (Turtle Reef), where the wall went from 20ish feet down to about 55 feet. Then the sandy seabed stayed flat at 55 feet for a while. It was actually a very easy dive, because when you swim out against the current, you keep the wall on your left, and when you swim back with the current, you keep the wall on your right. Easy peasey, with very little chance of getting lost. And it's quite gorgeous.

They did Open Water training dives there. They'd do the first two dives on the plateau above the wall, and drop down the wall for the last two dives.

Having 3000 feet of nothing below sounds a little crazy to me too, but I'm sure once you're there it's cool.

 

[fnfalman]

Riddle me this: from the first stage you would normally have: 2-legs going to the right (second stage & octo) and 2-legs going to the left (inflator hose and SPG). How did that person; whomever that diver was, coin the word octopus? There's only four legs?!!

 

[xyrandomyx]

You mean like this?

Silly diver. That phone box is obviously out of order.

 

[TMHeimer]

Silly diver. That phone box is obviously out of order.

Look for a pay phone nowadays (especially in N.Y.C.) and you may get this if you're lucky.

 

[windapp]

The term "water column" comes from the way water pressure is described in physics and engineering. A vertical column is used as a model to calculate the pressure at any given point, and show that pressure is a function of depth independant of the volume of water. When you talk about your position in the water column, you are refering to your vertical position relative to the surface without reference to your horizontal position. This is usually a term used when talking about the effects of changing pressure as you move up and down "in the water column".