What can YOU teach me?

[TSandM]

This is a fun thread, Mike! Hope people continue to contribute to it. It's fun to hear what people see as the unique facets of their local diving.

 

[Mike Boswell]

Here in Thailand we have the kind of conditions that make some cold water divers claim we are only half-trained because we don't have to deal with the psychological and other demands that cold water taxes divers with.

However, we do have coral, and lots of it. The thing I'd counsel a cold-water diver like yourself to be aware of is exactly where those fins are, regardless of the kick style you prefer. We also have swim-through boulder sites, so knowing where your tank is in relation to the space you're going through is important, especially since coral also grows in and around the swim throughs.

The other thing that's characteristic of our diving here is that virtually all of our dives are drifts, so it's important to know how to deploy an SMB. For drifts, good buddy skills are crucial since you can easily get way ahead of a buddy who stops to marvel at some critter in a hole in the wall.

I plan to buy one soon. Can you tell me what type of SMB is preferred?

 

[Mike Boswell]

In NJ we have some different types of diving. Inshore we have some jetties, long piles of rocks, that can be accessed either from the jetty itself or from a surf entry. There are generally a lot of fish there, with some tropicals like butterfly fish and trigger fish in the late summer. Currents and tides are important to pay attention to. Temperatures vary from low 80's in the summer (hey, it happened once or twice) to low 40's in winter.

Offshore some fantastic wreck diving is waiting. This is all boat diving, sometimes with very heavy current, but not drift diving. In other words you better be able to navigate the wreck or junk pile back to the anchor line. Some specialized gear include "uplines", where in you can tie off to the wreck, shoot a lift bag to the surface and there for not be too far away from the boat when you get there. "Jon" lines are also seen frequently here, these are lines that you tie to the anchor line while doing your stops, so you can hang easily even though the boat (and line) is heaving in the waves above. Also some way to get the attention of the boat crew should you lose or get blown off the line, whistle and sausage.

Water temps are pretty constant in the low 50's,at the bottom, viz can range from wholly crap I can see the entire wreck!, to wholly crap I can't see my hand on my mask, with the latter more common.

I read SHADOW DIVERS, a fascinating story. Is that a fair description of NJ wreck diving?

 

[seaducer]

I think so, yeah. Some of what I remember from the book seems a little dramatic, for effect, but most of it is pretty accurate.

I have no experience with the Doria, or artifact diving really, but I have also bumped into a couple of the people in the book, or people who know those people. And it was eerie driving into the marina and seeing the Seeker after having read the book as well.

The conditions you read about, dark, silty, coldish, and the fickle Atlantic are what it is like as well. But there are lobsters, mussels, fish, history, scallops, history, and hey, its diving.

 

[battles2a5]

NC Offshore diving is very similar to NJ diving, just warmer during most of the year. The winter diving has water temps in the 40-50's. Summer can get into the 80's. Vis is hit or miss- from 1ft to 150ft. The currents can absolutely rip here. And lots of people are not prepared to deal with current while diving off of an anchored boat. So follow the lines, don't fight the current, and just pull your way to the anchor line and down.

You would be amazed at the number of "advanced divers" that jump on NC dive boats and have their world rocked! They are usually the ones puffing their chests and telling everyone on the boat about their master diver certification. But almost without exception you see an OOA, ballistic missile impression, someone doesn't follow the lines and surfaces 800 yards from the boat, the list goes on.

So keep your eyes and ear open, tell the crew if you haven't been offshore in NC before, and watch how the experienced NC divers go about getting on and off the boat. Also, make sure you leave yourself plenty of gas to fight the currents on the way back up and get back on the boat.

 

[Quero]

I plan to buy one soon. Can you tell me what type of SMB is preferred?

Thanks for this thread. It's really interesting to see descriptions of the diversity of dive environments and the skills they necessitate.

The kind of SMB you will want depends on the dive conditions. The delayed type is preferred here, and we like the tall ones. We use them on every dive, deploying as we begin to ascend for the safety stop. For "every day" recreational diving I use a Surface Marker Pocket Buoy and a finger spool. They don't get much less "fancy" than this SMB, which is just an open ended tube, unless they're made of plastic with heat-sealed seams.

 

[Mike Boswell]

Here in South-Central Florida (Palm Beach-Jupiter-Stuart- Ft. Pierce), most of my diving consists of drifting reefs and wrecks. As we all should know, special safety equipment considerations for drift diving may include: sound producing devices, surface marker buoys+ reel (or spool), safety sausage and even portable VHF radios.

Water temps in Palm Beach fall between mid 60s during the winter to 85+ in the summer. Stuart and Ft. Pierce will see cooler temps as the Gulf Stream tends to be further offshore- temps down in the upper 50s are not unheard of.

If you get bored just looking as fish, recreational equipment for the area may include: a camera, lobster hunting gear or spearguns. The avid spearos will no doubt encounter sharks-hammerheads, bulls and reefies and for this reason most hunters will use liftbags to evacuate fish to the surface for the boat to retrieve.

Hope this helps for divers considering the South-central Florida area.

Steve Wood
Deep Six Jensen Beach, FL

Well, that is a first for me - a diver with a portable VHF radio. How do you keep it dry underwater?

I did some diving in the Keys and at John Pennecamp back in the 1970's, it was awesome, and you guys are lucky. Never saw any sharks, but there were good sized Grouper.

 

[iztok]

I just started diving less then a year ago and this is what I've learned.

NC Quarry diving - learned diving in low visibility.

SC Coast diving - low visibility, currents, waves - learned how to deal with currents and jumping off and climbing back onto boat with 4-6ft waves.

Thailand - warm waters, high visibility, currents, fast swimming DMs/Instructors - learned that one is sometimes better to slow down and depend on himself and pony bottle as a buddy instead of fast running DMs.

SoCal - first introduced to some DIR (UTD) divers. I liked the concept. First time I didn't make the dive as it was shore dive and I couldn't pass the waves to get in. Result is switching my split fins with straps to Hollis F1 with spring straps. I also learned that what is borderline diveable site off the Catalina Island is decent for Carolina coast. Lots of kelp and lots of marine life. First tried UW camera, learned that it adds quite some to taskloading and it is better to add it when you have good control w/o it. Best dive was night dive.

NorCal - first successful shore dive (Breakwater, CA). Helpful buddies. Learned that flying on TransCon for 6 hrs followed by 2 hrs drive to Monterey, CA then dive is hard to do. First introduced to kelp diving and got entangled and untangled by myself.

Florida - navigating coral heads is bit more difficult than expected. Lucky it was shallow dive as I would have got lost doing lobster hunting for the first time. When you do lobster hunting you are pretty much on your own and can't pay attention to much more around you (at least that is how it was for me). Wreck navigation is easy if you get one of the slates first and study it a bit. Spiegel Grove deserves several dives at least. Best time to dive in my opinion is night dive on a shallow reef.

Since I travel and dive I don't have a regular buddy so I try to pick up and learn from local habits much as I can. If you dive off of anchored/moored boat Carolina down system seems to work best. If you dive off of big cattle liveaboard (Thailand Similan Islands) tip deck hand early and decent as they will help you out a lot gearing up and taking stuff off (esp. if you sling a bottle). Generally tip crew at least $5 per tank (regardless if their local wages are low) unless they are not much of a help. Being kind to the crew pays off big time regardless where you dive esp. if you dive off a smallish boat.

 

[carrielsal]

Here is central Texas we have a pretty nice lake to dive. In the winter the temp drops down to about 50 and in the summer the temp at the surface gets like a bathtub, but gets down to 60 down deep. Vis right now is 10-15' above 100', but can get so bad below 100' that you can't see the glow of your gauges. Last summer we had a drought and the lake level dropped over 40'. You had to climb rocks to get down to the water and vis dropped down to just a few feet. Good buddy skills are important.
Fishing line is always an entanglement issue and off the scuba park there is a pecan grove that starts at 100'. Boats are always an issue. It's pretty common for a boater to drift into the dive parks.
Many of us go out on the MV Spree liveaboard to dive the Flower Gardens in the Gulf of Mexico. The size of the waves can change quickly out in the gulf and there can be swift currents.

 

[The Chairman]

In Central and North Florida Springs, the temperature fluctuates wildly from a chilly 72^oF in the winter to a blistering 72^oF in the summer. Most of the time the vis is a crappy 150 ft though it will sometimes improve to be well over 200.

However, there is a lot of silt, so get your frog kick on and be careful of the bottom. Also, it's best to not feed the gators... especially your fingers!