Wow 0-vis

[Arc-Fett]

So, I jsut got certified last week, and my instructer asked if my and my brother wanted to go treasure diving with him, Sweet right? untill he told us it was zero vis. So it was a little creepy, me and my brother went down to 43 feet, which was the deepest part of the river. What was your first zero vis experience?

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I did lots of zero viz freediving in rivers when I was younger, just to do it I suppose.

My first truly zero viz open circuit dive was a commercial dive to locate and fix a leak in an intake line under about 3 ft of silt. Zero viz is pretty common on commercial dives or when doing salvage or recovery work, so after a while you don't even think twice about it.

 

[demarest652]

The second open water dive we did in my o/w class was 0 vis. ive made a few others no matter what the vis it beats being above the surface.

 

[ljdiver]

Not too long ago during spring break. My recently certified buddy and I did a shore dive where we usually drop in about 30ft of water. The first descent we immediately lost each other and resurfaced to meet up. Then we descended with arms linked and continued the dive which maxed at 65ft. Vis was zero the whole time but we were familiar with the site and I found the dive surprisingly fun, it was definitely good practice.

 

[TMHeimer]

My first zero viz was 2 months ago here at our Nova Scotia house on the Atlantic. It was after some rough surf due to storms. Still a lot of surge at the shallow depth I did, and chilly at 33 F. As was stated, good practise, but nothing much else.

 

[spectrum]

So, I just got certified last week, and my instructor asked if my and my brother wanted to go treasure diving with him, Sweet right? until he told us it was zero vis. So it was a little creepy, me and my brother went down to 43 feet, which was the deepest part of the river. What was your first zero vis experience?

Well there's zero visibility and then there's zero visibility.

RANT......
If it was truly zero visibility then your instructor was not serving your best interest. There's no way he could be keeping an eye on you or even you and your brother maintaining good contact. All of you could have been solo diving in a heartbeat. Being new divers in a river with currents and a big likelihood of entanglement hazards it was a bad place to bring new divers. Even if your brother is a seasoned diver the reality of zero visibility is a dive specialty in it's own right. End of rant.

One local ocean site has clay reefs. Lobsters and other critters burrow and fill the water with bands of fine clay. The result in not being able to see your own instruments even in broad daylight at 15 feet. If you focus and use a light you can continue swimming and you usually break out of the fog in a few dozen yards.

Another dive was working with invasive millfoil control mats. they had been down for a good part of the year and it was time to bring them up. The job involved removing stakes and then rolling the 10 foot square mats. Everything was pretty stirred up and the whole deal was pretty much done by feel. The sense of isolation from seeing nothing even though my eyes were wide open and there was moderate light was really cool.

Turning the light off on a night dive is always fun!

Pete

 

[Sas]

I've done two zero viz dives only. The first one started off at about 20cm viz and was to be my buddy's 100th dive so we got in despite the dodgy conditions. We lost each other a few times and had to surface (was a fairly shallow shore dive) and it just got way too rough so we headed back to the shore after about 40mins, I stayed under as long as I could because of the surface. It is very rocky and I swam face first into rocks a few times and basically had to do the exit holding my hands in front of my face.

The second one was to recover a cover from my buddy's yacht one night. We did the dive holding onto each other using the other hand to feel along the bottom for the cover. There was a huge layer of silt and it was quite creepy to be putting my hand in it. I could not read my gauges or computer. In one place it cleared up to 10cm or so and I saw a tube worm with a few little fish around it We never ended up finding the cover as we hadn't really planned for zero viz and basically were just swimming around randomly looking for it. I actually found it really fun overall, something different to what I am used to

 

[Avonthediver]

I live in Northwest arkansas and I do a lotttt!!!!! of 0 viz diving in rivers lakes and sometimes just water holes, and after awhile you just get used to it.
if I go with a buddy the safty goes up and dives are alot shorter.
to keep from getting split sometimes we will use a short line to each other so we can work better and you know your buddy is their even if you cant see e'm!

 

[Arc-Fett]

I live in Northwest arkansas and I do a lotttt!!!!! of 0 viz diving in rivers lakes and sometimes just water holes, and after awhile you just get used to it.
if I go with a buddy the safty goes up and dives are alot shorter.
to keep from getting split sometimes we will use a short line to each other so we can work better and you know your buddy is their even if you cant see e'm!

Thats what my brother and I did, used clips and hooked a rope between us. worked great.

 

[Buoyant1]

About three years ago I did a dive I refer to as the "milk dive". Our local quarry has Wednesday night diving (which is great for those of us that usually are stuck doing other things on the weekends) and this was one of those nights...There was a series of storms going through the area, but they were done and gone away before it was time to jump in. It WAS; however, drizzling slightly when we all arrived, so we set up on the lower access under the pavilions. Since it was raining that night, we figured that it would be deserted, and it was, but die-hards we are, we decided to go with it. Being that we were at the lower access, we entered there. We walked out about 20 yards to where it started to drop off, and then did a little surface swim to get out to the 15 ft. water. We gave our signal, and descended. THere were three of us, Two regulars and a guy that wanted to give the Wednesday night thing a go. AS soon as I dropped down, I looked at my computer to watch my descent rate, and couldn't see it in front of my face! So I moved it closer, no luck...after about 30 seconds to a minute, I ascended to see if the others were still down and I just surfaced in time to see their heads popping up about 10-15 feet away from me! Needless to say we couldn't continue at that area, so we decided to swim over to what's known as the bowl area and see if it was clearer over there...THANKFULLY it was and we didn't need to abort the dive. (yeah, lug all that gear, set it up, get it wet for a 1 minute dive! ) It was like diving in a glass of milk the run off was so thick! Now normally the quarry is about 3-5 ft visibility during algae bloom time, but this was crazy!

We dove yesterday and the visibility was about 20+ feet...not too bad!