- Messages
- 93,607
- Reaction score
- 92,097
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
The biggest problem with not going with a guide is that you may end up swimming amongst wonderful sea life and never even know it's there. Marine creatures are often excellent at camoflauge ... it's how they avoid becoming lunch. Many choose their habitat because they can blend in with it extremely well. And sometimes, even if it's easily visible, you have to know where to look. Dive guides are familiar with not just the local marine life, but what types of habitat they prefer ... a specific type of sea fan or anemone, for example ... and therefore know where to look to find the very creatures you're spending all that money to go find.
Can you find them on your own? Perhaps ... but certainly not to the degree of someone who knows where to look, or what to look for. Lots of times it boils down to pattern recognition. I recall when I was a new diver and went on a dive trip where everyone else was raving about a certain type of crab that they were seeing. When I mentioned that me and my dive buddy had not seen any, they looked at us kind of funny and asked how we could miss them ... they were everywhere! Next dive, one of the more experienced divers swam toward us, signaled, and pointed down to what we had been taking as a rock. Closer inspection revealed that this rock had legs, eyes, and a spectacularly colorful underside ... these were the crabs they were talking about. Once we knew what to look for, we found several.
I hear what you're saying that they go different places, and that the guideless dive op offers the better dive sites. I'd say go with that dive op ... and if you can get a guide or manage to hook up with someone who knows the sites, do so. If it turns out you're expected to dive on your own, do as much research as possible beforehand to learn what to look for ... then swim slowly enough to give yourself a chance to develop that pattern recognition once you're on site.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
Can you find them on your own? Perhaps ... but certainly not to the degree of someone who knows where to look, or what to look for. Lots of times it boils down to pattern recognition. I recall when I was a new diver and went on a dive trip where everyone else was raving about a certain type of crab that they were seeing. When I mentioned that me and my dive buddy had not seen any, they looked at us kind of funny and asked how we could miss them ... they were everywhere! Next dive, one of the more experienced divers swam toward us, signaled, and pointed down to what we had been taking as a rock. Closer inspection revealed that this rock had legs, eyes, and a spectacularly colorful underside ... these were the crabs they were talking about. Once we knew what to look for, we found several.
I hear what you're saying that they go different places, and that the guideless dive op offers the better dive sites. I'd say go with that dive op ... and if you can get a guide or manage to hook up with someone who knows the sites, do so. If it turns out you're expected to dive on your own, do as much research as possible beforehand to learn what to look for ... then swim slowly enough to give yourself a chance to develop that pattern recognition once you're on site.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)