How do you know if you are ready for strong current diving?

[silent running]

Hi! I have been a long time lurker of ScubaBoard – I read a lot but don’t really contribute much I have a “lucky” problem here – my husband is currently negotiating a new job out in Asia. We have a 99.9% chance of permanently relocating to either Hong Kong or Singapore (currently living in New York, but we are not Americans though!). Once he has signed on the new job, he will need to take a 3 month mandatory paid leave. We are planning to use this time to pack up and move to Asia plus do some wicked traveling. The time frame of the diving trip is most likely going to be late April or early May 2011 for 2-3 weeks and we don’t really have a budget (we are willing to spend money when necessary to reach a certain location and we def want hot water and A/C all the way, but Four Seasons type accommodations not a pre-requisite). I have a bucket-list of to-dive locations and we hope to do one of the following in no special order (the more remote the location, the better, since hubby usually needs to stay in touch for work on holidays, it’s a rare break for us to travel to someplace with no cell reception):

1) Fiji
2) French Polynesia / Tuamotus
3) PNG
4) Raja Ampat
5) Wakatobi
6) Komodo
7) Palau/Yap
8) Australia Barrier Reefs
9) Thailand Similan

My hubby and I dove Grand Cayman, Belize, Philippines Bohol, Sipadan and Lembeh in the past. We had approx 60 lifetime dives before under moderate conditions. So we are not newbies who cannot control our buoyancy, yet we have never really encountered mask-ripping current before. Hubby is into photography (Lembeh was great!) We are in our early 30s, in good health conditions.

This trip will be departing from HK, since that’s where I will get free babysitting from the grandparents (I have a toddler son). I am ruling out Similans (tail end of the season – we can always do it another time from HK) and Oz (winter there right?). French Polynesia is too difficult to get to from HK (and expensive!) so it’s out of the picture. There is a weekly direct flight from HK to Nadi and Port Moresby. There is a direct flight from HK-Guam to connect to Palau (layover slightly annoying, but doable though) or we go via Manila or Taipei. HK-Bali or HK-Jakarta is a piece of cake. I’ve heard all of the remaining locations have strong current condition – so question for you guys – how do you know you are ready to take the plunge and do some ripping current diving? I love diving, but I also don’t want to risk my life to do something I am physically not ready for. My hubby’s heart is set on Raja Ampat (ever since he has heard about it from an Indo friend) – is diving in Raja Ampat “relatively easier” than other locations (excluding Similan) on my list? I personally want to try either an extended Palau trip or a Lembeh / Raja Ampat combo. We have never done a liveaboard either – so dunno how we would feel about it. What would you recommend for us? Thanks!

Hello Sharka, most of the places you mentioned can have very strong currents which are not to be taken lightly. However, most all of your exposure to currents will be dictated by your dive op and or boat Capt. I will give an example below:

I did a trip to Alor Indonesia, which has some of the most challenging and rewarding diving I've ever done, right up there with PNG. I went with a girlfriend who was a brand new diver with maybe 10 dives and I did mostly more advanced dives with my rebreather and two other rebreather divers. We all went out on the boat together each morning and she dived with the DM at one site, and myself and the 2 other rebreather divers would go to a more advanced site near by. Some mornings we would all enter the water together and it was just a matter of which direction we went in-she and the DM would go away from the point and we would go around it to find the current and the bigger fish doing their thing. Then we would all do a muck dive together in the afternoon on the way back to the town. The DM had no real problems keeping my girlfriend out of trouble on the morning dives and she had a great experience, sometimes even while we rebreather divers were only a few hundred feet away getting blown all around, looking for the bigger fish.

It was a fantastic trip and well managed risk wise, with one major exception. One afternoon, myself and another rebreather diver decided to do an exploratory dive in a short channel where a pod of dolphins lived. The Capt/DM had not dived in this exact spot before. We knew the depth was about 20M and that the current was strong between the two small islands. It was going to be a short drift at about 7-10M for about 15 minutes to look for the dolphins. I took my surface marker buoy so the boat could follow us because rebreathers don't make bubbles. We jumped in and immediately saw the pod of big pacific blue dolphins, which was great, but they soon left. Then the current began to move up and down violently. I was able to keep from being dragged down because of my SMB, but my buddy got separated in the current and was dragged down to about 60M two times. This all happened very quickly over just a few minutes and the other diver did eventually get out of the current as we drifted past the two islands and into calm water again. They were shaken up, but unhurt, thanks to the short duration spent at depth, and having a rebreather with enough O2 rich nitrox to get through the all the heavy exertion.

I mention this scary dive to point out how easy it is to make a mistake in a place like Indonesia, even for a very experienced Capt. The mistake he made was that while he had dived in this channel many times before, he had never gone all the way to the end, where it turns out there was a drop off from 20M to 65M, which created an underwater down current, like a waterfall, with all the crazy up/down turbulence we experienced. I would not recommend doing exploratory dives in a place like Indonesia without a rebreather, which are great tools in the right hands and can greatly enhance the dive experience and your safety.

I really would not worry about the currents in a particular place so much. Figure out which place appeals to you most and if you have concerns about that location, contact the dive operation and tell them what your level of experience is and what you are comfortable with. Most destinations have a huge variation in the kinds of diving available in their area, so a good operation should be able to tailor the diving to your level. As I said above, sometimes it's just a matter of going in a different direction from the more experienced divers, at the same site. When you get there, listen to and follow the DM's instructions. If they are experienced and communicate well, you should have no problems. Lots of people have dived in places like Komodo and Northern PNG and never had a scary story to tell, so the risk is clearly manageable to a large degree, or these places wouldn't be in business... -Andy

 

[Centrals]

Liveaboard to Tubataha Reef in Philippines. The diving season is from mid Mar to mid June.
Singapore is a better location to fly out to varies diving locations around SE Asia than HK except to Philippines.

 

[Sharka]

Centrals - I don't really have a choice here. The free babysitting I get is in HK so doesn't matter if I relocate to Singapore (dunno yet, location to be finalized next month), the trip needs to leave/return HK (unless you are suggesting that I abandon my first born child for diving!)

Regardless, either a relocation to SIN or HK is infinitely a step up from living in New York (in terms of dive travel)!

Philippines I am ruling out for now. We have been once already and we are planning to do a "hard-to-get-to" dive trip this time. (Pretty easy to do PH from HK some other time)

Anyway, thanks to everyone who responded to me. I am awaiting the whole relocation to finalize next month. I think RA is still highest on the list at the moment (since we have extra time to travel to Sorong and deal with the indo internal flights), although hubby looked at the Wakatobi website and thought the place looks awesome...

 

[vladimir]

Regardless, either a relocation to SIN or HK is infinitely a step up from living in New York (in terms of dive travel)!

Better, but not infinitely so (unless you've been diving Dutch Springs). I like the direct flight from Newark on Saturday morning that has you setting up your tank on the Belize Aggressor at 2:00 or 3:00 that afternoon. The direct to Bonaire is less convenient, traveling overnight, but you can get three dives in on the day you arrive with a minimum of fuss. And it's a lot easier to get to Cocos, my personal mecca, from New York than Asia. But yes, of course, the diving out here is much better, for the most part. As Centrals observed, Singapore is much better than Hong Kong for traveling from. I'd get an extra bedroom and import your mom as babysitting opportunities present themselves.

 

[Sharka]

I hear ya. I used to dive the Caribbean before junior comes along, but once he is here, I need free babysitting to get out and get wet again. People here always think I am so cool for going to "far out" places to dive in Asia etc... well they aren't so far if you have to do a mandatory stop in HK to drop the kid off first.

I am not really into wear 7mm yet and I get seasick easily, so Cocos + Galapagos are out of the picture now. But one day... I will get there (wanna see those sea lions). Who knows, maybe by then my son will be old enough to dive and he can be my buddy for that trip

By the way, I don't hear too much about Tubataha (even comparing to other places in PH)? What's the reason here?

 

[Centrals]

Hi Sharka,
If your family do move to HK, please check up South China Diving Club. Lembeh in Northern Sulawesi is the mecca for macro photography. There are expensive resorts, eg. Kungkungan Bay and Lembeh Resort, ie. with AC and hot water. Current is minimal.
Regards.

 

[Sharka]

Thanks! Will check you guys out if we pick HK. Would be nice to live in a place with some weekend option to get wet / test gear. Yes we've been to the Lembeh Resort last July, superb diving. Hence the original idea of going to RA. We can potentially stop by at Lembeh again and get back into the diving groove before heading out to RA. Was very jealous when I saw the lines of passengers (with dive bags in their hands) heading onto the Sorong flight when we were waiting in Manado airport. Well to be precise I envied them going to RA, the flight itself, not so much...

 

[Shasta_man]

Nice story Long Running. That's why I did what the divemasters told us in Indo. If they said, don't go ahead of us or around that corner, you did that because you can't fight it. You just find a way through it. I learned in Komodo and RA how to use the underwater terrain to limit exposure to the currents, using it to block the currents and how that same terrain can essentially create currents by compressing the volume of water flowing through. 10 feet off the reef you might not feel anything and can just float, while right on the reef or along the wall that flow creates a current. Watching the fish because they don't swim backwards. Whichever way they are pointed and wherever they are swimming like mad, there's the current.

 

[Shasta_man]

Oops, I meant "Silent Running".

 

[silent running]

Oops, I meant "Silent Running".

No problem, ha ha ha!