New "appreciation" of what low viz is

[jeckyll]

So we are taking a break from our rescue course and decided to get out for a bit of dive. At our regular local dive site the tide is lower than I've ever seen it and the entry is made oh so much more exciting because of all the exposed slippery rocks.

3 of us finally make into the water and as we are putting on our fins one buddy loses his. Time to go look for it.

I pop in my reg and under I go. When I stretch out my hand I can no longer see it. :11doh:
I start trying to swim a bit of a U pattern but it's next to useless, all the vegitation could be a fin until I stick my hand out. At on point I "find" my buddy who's standing in 4 feet of water. I feel his leg and it takes me a second to realize what it is (he thought I was trying to make off with his remaining fin). After a 3 or 4 minutes I finally stand up to tell him I can't see a thing and didn't find his fin... and as I stand I feel something between my legs. Sure enough, it's his fin!

That was the absolute worst viz I've ever been it. Getting to the point were you lose sight of your hands is pretty trippy

The viz didn't get much better till below 40 feet, but it did finally get better

 

[idratherbedivin]

That happened to me once as well except it was my fault. I was doing my first open water cert dive for my dry suit course and I had a little trouble with the air in my suit and ended up kicking up a ton of silt off the bottom. When I was in that silt i could barely see my hands in front of me. It kind of unnerved me but luckily since there was no current the silt didn't go to far and i was able to swim out of it and enjoy the rest of the dive.

 

[DiveBandit]

I did a shark tooth dive in Venice beach Florida where the vis' was so bad I now have scratches on my mask from having my face in the sand at the bottom (15ft.) in order to see the teeth i was trying to find (and found 3).

 

[kidspot]

The only time I've had vis under 15ft was while trying to retrieve a camera for someone who lost it at the boatramp - with my HID light on I could see about 4-6"... searched for about 10 minutes through the thick silt, but never did find the camera... I did find an oar another boater had lost though I can't imagine diving in that kind of vis all the time, like some of the guys on the board here do ...

Congratulations on the recovery of the fin btw!

Aloha, Tim

 

[IwakuniDiver]

Here on the Southeastern Side of Honshu, Japan, vis is pretty regularly <8ft and averages around 5. The scary thing is that I have been getting pretty used to it and when we have a treat like we did last night, we had over 20ft of vis., we feel pretty special.

Occasionally, the vis is so bad that you can't see your glove at the end of your arm. One time it was like that on a day we were scheduled to do a deco stop simulation from suspended air tanks. It did make getting down to the tanks a neat challenge.

 

[AZ Desert Diver]

I know what you are saying. I did a check out dive in one of our local lakes that had about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 ft. viz. You get over any of your fears really quickly when diving in something like that.

 

[PerroneFord]

I've done 3 dives in that kinda stuff... 3-4ft maybe. With a silty bottom. If you get 3 feet off the bottom, you can't tell the water from the sand. We were inching our way toward a platform going as slowly as we could, and I still nearly hit my head on the platform. If fact, it was so bad, on the third dive, my buddy wore a strobe. I could see his fins, but I could NOT see the strobe on his shoulder AND his fins at the same time if I was behind him. We had to do the entire dive shoulder to shoulder.

I'll stick with my normal 80-200ft vis springs, thanks very much.

 

[fmw625]

My first encounter with bad viz, normal viz 3 to 6 ft., was when i was diving behind my buddy and he stired up the silt on the bottom. viz went to zero. you could barely see your hand on your mask. I stopped circled and could not locate my buddy so I surfaced. A short time later my buddy surfaced with in 20 ft of me. The rest of the dive we dove shoulder to shoulder.

 

[Gary D.]

You guys want an example of really bad vis, I mean really bad vis.?

Use caution as this thread isn't for everyone.
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=139580

Gary D.

 

[TekDiveGirl]

Bad vis is when you are descending and you go *thud* but you don't even see it!