When is bad vis a problem?

[SailNaked]

when is low vis a problem and why? what is the fear? I have been diving the local mud pit a lot lately for DM course and there are times when I say to myself, wow this 6ft vis is great today, and then there are times when I feel like my underwater world is very small and long for the open ocean. last weekend we were cleaning the trash from the lake and I was looking for trash or a numbered golf ball in about zero vis, seemed ok but I was a little nervous that I would stick my reg in the mud and gunk it up, I guess the only fear at that would be a free flow and end of the dive. when I did my wreck course we went into a wreck with a line and about 3ft of vis, seemed a lot tight in there and I did not want to hang about. I had a line and was somewhat comforted by that but if I had gotten tied up in something I might have had to take quite a few calming breaths. so what about low vis bothers you? Sharks? alligators? accidentally swimming into a cave? bumping your head?

 

[Leejnd]

Well, I don't do overhead environments, so I don't dive in wrecks or caves. But I have done my share of zero-vis dives, and the main reason I dislike them is because there's nothing to see! What fun is diving if all I can do is stare at the sand on the bottom, or if I'm lucky enough to find a reef, just the few inches of reef in front of my face? I dive so I can look at cool stuff underwater, and if I can't see anything, that kinda takes all the fun out of it.

As for what scares me about low-vis diving, for me it would be losing my buddy, or inadvertantly swimming into a clump of kelp and getting wrapped up in it. But mainly, it's just the fact that there doesn't seem to be much point in diving if all I'm doing is finning around blindly. Sorta like doing a night dive without a light.

 

[Diver0001]

It depends on what you're doing. If I'm giving lessons I need to be able to see the whole group. Sometimes that means that the group has to be 2 divers..... and sometimes I can't see my own flippers and have to ca'ncel the dive.

Same applies to buddy contact. If the viz is so bad that the team can't stay together then it's an issue. I've occasionally scrubbed dives before getting in the water too based on just looking in the water and saying OMG! ... LOL fortunately that does'nt happen very often.

Other than that nothing about bad viz in and of itself bothers me. If I close my eyes I don't freak out so why should limited viz bother me?

R..

 

[SailNaked]

Bad vis can be relative, like for me if i was diving in Shark water about 20ft of vis would probably make me nervous, I could see the reef ok but it would be easy for a shark to surprise me and I might think about that while diving. (I am not generally afraid of sharks but sharks and low vis would be concerning). 6 ft vis might be fine for a checkout dive for open water students but would not be ok for a new part of a cave exploration.

 

[ligersandtions]

I did a dive in a couple feet of vis last weekend. Vis ranged from about two to five feet....it was amazing how "clear" the water seemed when we were getting five feet of vis

We spent 40 minutes or so diving. Bad vis isn't so much an issue, but when you're not seeing much, it just doesn't make sense to keep diving (for the sake of adding a logged dive to your count or whatever). In socal, the vis is often bad because the surge is bad....when it's really surge-y, particulates get stirred up. When this happens, it can be very disorienting and makes me feel seasick....so I don't particularly enjoy myself. If I'm not enjoying myself, I don't see the point...

 

[Leejnd]

In socal, the vis is often bad because the surge is bad....when it's really surge-y, particulates get stirred up. When this happens, it can be very disorienting and makes me feel seasick....so I don't particularly enjoy myself. If I'm not enjoying myself, I don't see the point...

Yeah, that's another thing that bothers me when we end up in those murky dives - the surge, and the accompanying nausea. The last time I did an almost-zero-vis dive was a couple months ago - a beach dive in Malibu (as most of my bad-vis dives have been) and you're right - the surge, coupled with not being able to see anything, had me feeling rather punk in the stomach.

Diving just ain't fun if 1) you can't see anything, and 2) you feel like hurling into your reg. That pretty much describes that dive to a T.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

When is bad vis a problem? Well, I recall a dive where we had to make a free ascent from 205 fsw because we couldn't find the upline (vis was maybe 3 feet). Even that wouldn't have been much of a problem except we were in a shipping lane, and at our 60-foot stop we could feel a tug passing by above us (towing a barge, it turned out). It still wasn't a problem, in reality ... but it did make for some stressful moments as we had a significant (25 minute) shallow obligation ahead of us ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Leejnd]

Bob - :homealone:

Okay, your story of nearly being decapitated by a barge in a shipping lane WAY supercedes my minor little hurling-in-my-reg story!

 

[overkillphil]

What kind of draft are those barges/ tugs running? Scary stuff!!

 

[Robert Phillips]

Surge>Visibility=Bad dive