How many times diving the same site?

[MaxBottomtime]

I am also fortunate to have a variety of diving near home. I live near the Palos Verdes peninsula in Los Angeles. We have several dozen life-filled reefs, at least a hundred shipwrecks and offshore islands if that's not enough. My favorite shore dive site is Marineland, where I have made 356 dives.

[youtubehq]X0pfl_6e4oM[/youtubehq]

 

[Bob DBF]

200+ dives from the beach at Van Damme State Park in Nor Cal. Been diving and camping there since the late 70s. It is protected by a reef so you can still dive if the other sites are blown out. It has kelp beds inside the reef with max depth of 35 or so feet and outside the reef drops to 70' and more if you like to swim. All kinds of underwater critters in the kelp and part of the area is now protected. Temp is 50f plus or minus all year.

A lot of Abalone divers as well as SCUBA divers and classes use the area so I have found a lot of gear over the years, from my first weight belt to the Fogcutter knife I picked up recently.

It's at least two and a half hours ride each way now and well worth the trip.

Bob
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I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.

 

[RJP]

If so, what makes you go back to that site?

The boat I crew on keeps going to the same sites!

:shocked2:

 

[swander]

I mostly spearfish and have a couple of sites that I go to quite a bit. My favorite is the Avocet. It is a huge dredge that sits in 127 ft of water 28 miles south of Pensacola pass. It is a great dive!! The other is a barge 3 miles from Orange Beach Alabama that I have dove 15 times. I used to go there allot when I dove by myself. All of my buddies dive Florida so I rarely get over there anymore. Grouper on the Avocet on Vimeo

Steve

 

[driftwood]

I dive Spring Lake in San Marcos at least once a week. Constant 72 degree temp, carib vis, they fill my tanks for free, no admission and 25 minutes from the house.

 

[TSandM]

Puget Sound has a lot of dive sites, but two of them are within 30 minute of my house. One of those sites is also halfway between me and two of my favorite buddies, has great parking, restrooms, and a restaurant on site. I probably have 200 or more dives there. I've done training dives, and class dives, and showing-out-of-towners-around dives, and scooter dives, and dive club dives . . . and lots and lots of just fun dives there. I know where the four juvenile vermilion rockfish are usually found, and where to look for warbonnets, and the likely places to find Giant Pacific Octopuses.

But diving is like a treasure hunt . . . you never, ever know what the sea will bring out. I have seen my only six gill shark there, and my only ribbon worm (gorgeous creature!), and my only hagfish (not so gorgeous). You can never feel that you have seen everything a site has to offer, because if you aren't seeing anything new, chances are it's because you have stopped looking around with a beginner's eyes.

 

[mikemill]

I've been going back to the same site because:
1) There is a lot to see
2) It has a nice facility
3) I need time to really nail down all the navigation points, false roads, hazards, etc so I can go to the sites further out
4) THERE IS A LOT TO SEE!!!

 

[scadreau]

I'm just talking in general.

The closest dive site to me that I'm aware of at this time is 5 hours away. Quite a hike, and no day trip so it's still going to cost me a bit of money in gas/hotel/etc...but believe me I plan to be there a lot this May-October, but that's all the more time I'll get out of a year there. In the winter next year I plan to visit warmer places.

Jeni,

Where in MO are you? I have some friends there that may be able to point you to a closer spot.

I dive the local lake here in Arizona. Viz sucks, it is chilly, there is very little life to see and can be a pain with the drunk boaters that don't know what a dive flag means. It is ok though because I am diving! Also, it is great to work on skills since there is nothing to distract you

 

[tstormdiver]

Including the Open Water classes I have done, I have well over 300 dives at my local quarry. The quarry has a little to offer just about anyone & is only 1-1/2hrs from where I live. It has a very shallow shelf(wade- in deep- about 7ft deep), good for working & fine tuning buoyancy & weighting. The shallow end gets about 25 ft deep & is about 1/4th of the quarry. It has a bunch of sunken items to check out like an RV, a UH1 Helicopter, a large yacht, a school bus, a van, lots of small boats, a telephone & training platforms. The deep end pretty much takes up the other 3/4 (except the very shallow shelf) of the quarry & averages about 100ft deep. The deepest point is said to be 117 ft, but I've only been able to find 105 ft so far. There is also a lot of stuff sunken in the deep end Like yachts, larger boats, rock crushing equipment, refrigerators, a van & a deep training platform. I'll be honest, I really haven't explored very much of the deep end Because of the cold, depth & gas limitations, but with my DPV, I hope to change that this next year. In the summer there can be up to 3 or 4 thermoclines with a constant year round temperature of 42 degrees below 60 ft. There are lots of fish (bluegill- AKA KY piranha, crappie, catfish, bass) & there is something for almost every level of diver. Here is the quarry's web site: http://www.pennyroyalscuba.com/pennyroyal_files/page0001.htm . Here is also a video our head instructor took just swimming around in 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_OzvuM38vE . I am actually going there to do a midnight dive on New Year's Eve! Can't wait!

 

[vladimir]

As a vacation diver, I don't usually have the luxury of repeating a site many times. There are a lot of sites I can think of that wouldn't bore me if I dived them twice a day for a month. When I lived in Singapore I used to make frequent weekend trips to Phuket, so I have at least a dozen dives at each of Shark Point, Ko Doc Mai, Anemone Reef, Racha Yai, and Racha Noi--the spots the day boats go to, for the most part (along with King Cruiser, I guess). I have maybe ten dives at The Elbow in Belize. Places like Sipadan and Layang-layang lent themselves to repeating a site--they're small atolls, so if you were there for a week (no longer possible at Sipadan) you might hit one site at least once a day. I did the "house reef" each day, and we hit the same spots with the skiff each day too. We had good hammerhead action at one site at Layang-layang so we kept going back, twice a day for a few days. We would have done more but it was deep. Simiarly, Manuelita Outside at Cocos was the go-to site when I was there--that's where we were seeing the most hammerheads. I probably have the most dives on the beaten-up reef in front of the Harbour Village Beach Club in Bonaire. It's not much of a site, but it's too convenient to pass up when I'm staying there--just wade in.

There is value to repeating a site, especially to a macro photographer. You will know where to look for the octopus, the yellow-headed jawfish incubating eggs, or the juvenile angel that seems willing to pose for you, so you can keep going back until you get the shot that you want.