What's between warm and cold water diving?

[Thrillhouse]

Puns aside, what's the middle-ground between these often-treated-as-black-and-white environments, and what are some examples? Is there a region where you can have both coral and visibility with kelp-forests and lots of biodiversity?

 

[texdiveguy]

...what's the middle-ground between these often-treated-as-black-and-white environments....

A thermocline.

 

[Thrillhouse]

Har har.

I guess I should have said "puns and wise-cracks aside."

 

[TSandM]

Is there a region where you can have both coral and visibility with kelp-forests and lots of biodiversity?

Yes!

I was STUNNED by my experiences diving off Los Angeles. Hydrocoral in stunning colors, kelp forests, tons of invertebrates, a good variety and profusion of fish. We were lucky, I understand, to have had the viz we had (which ranged from 40 to over 100 feet), but it was really stunning. The water temperature is cold enough to support a ton of life, but there's enough sunlight to allow you to see the color.

It's not a dichotomy, but a gradation.

 

[muddiver]

There are coral off of the West coast in the realitively cold water, they just are not as colorful as the warm water coral and not as large. The biodiversity of the cold water, like TSandM stated, is amazing.

I think the middle ground between cold water and warm water diving is the mid Atlantic and southern California coasts. These are the ares where one would most likely dive wet with more than a shorty and less than two layers of 1/4" neoprene.

The two get treated differently because vacation divers that will travel only to a warm water destination will never own a dry suit or wet suit thicker than a 5/4 mil. The extent of training that a vacation diver will aspire to will probably never go past Advanced Open Water so they can do that 90' dive to the special cavern formation.

More enthusiastic divers that don't have the time or cash flow to travel to the Caribean or Hawaii will more than likely be familuar with dry suits, 7" wet suits and all the other heavy gear used in colder water. Cold water divers also tend to spend more time geting more certifications.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Yup ... I was thinking "Catalina Island" ... a place where it was great to have a drysuit, but possible to do a 64 minute dive in a completely flooded one and not get too cold. The critters made such a dive worth doing ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Hank49]

This may be tending toward the warmer side of "not cold" but what about the Galapagos?

 

[bajashack]

It's not a dichotomy, but a gradation.

Nice use of words! Catalina experiences water temp at the surface in the summer to 70-73 degrees. Usually when water temp is that warm vis is out the door. With that said local people still consider this as cold water diving, and people still jump in with Dry Suits. The Kelp forest reaches from 60-80 feel high. California has coral most of it is not as colorful as what you would see in many warm water locations. In the Galapagos islands because of the depth of the dives most people still use a 5 or 7 mill.

 

[ShakaZulu]

If you're going to Catalina, you are close enough to take a trip to La Bufadora in Mexico....awesome diversity. Checkout the photo's on this site....

Dale's dive shop in La Bufadora, Baja California

 

[paradicio]

Other's have shot better, but here's what some of our CA coral looks like.

And in the kelp...