Your shallowest dives-or-what kind of dives do you like the best?

[MikeFerrara]

128 Minutes in a local cave. Max depth 11 feet.

Its nice to have literally hours to figure your self out of a jam and not have to worry about deco at all.

My wife and I dived a little cave in Kentucky where our max depth was about 9 ft. Of course we had to swim our gear accross a lake and use ropes to get it up a mountain to get to the cave entrance. The entrance was a knee deep mud puddle at the bottom of a rock face. You slipped into your gear, slid down into the mud and crawled under the rock to get in. the vis wasn't too bad once we were in and there were tons of creyfish. Very silty though. Just touching a rock to tie off a line blew things out pretty good. We went to where the existing line goes through a restriction, which wasn't very far, and turned. It wasn't much of a dive but was definately an experience.

 

[MikeFerrara]

What a neat question Mike. I'm been lucky enough to enjoy a few hundred shallow dives over the years. My current definition of shallow involves some beach dives that are 25' and shallower. Between fossils, shell beds, roving gangs of squid, cruising tarpon, teeth, and curious triggers, there's always something cool to play with or watch.

Tarpon sounds cool. My wife likes the fossils. We've free dived the Swanee River looking for fossils while we were in Florida cave diving. We skipped the scuba because we had both kids with us and my daughter doesn't dive...she can but she doesn't like it believe it or not. We've hit it a couple of times where we were lucky enough to be down there when the river wasn't all tanic.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

All of the beachable shipwrecks off the AL Gulf Coast are in less than 18' of water. The rest of the beach dive sites are in less than 35' of water. I do shallow alot, see quite a bit of stuff, and enjoy the heck outa my shallow dives.

I enjoy the deeper stuff too, but 15 min in the deep goes by mighty quick compared to 2 hours of shallow diving.

 

[bogrady]

My favorite local dive is a clear spring-fed river with a constant temp of 68 to 70. I stopped carrying a depth guage because the deepest hole I had found was about 15 ft. I'm not sure how long the dives last as that is another unnecessary instrument. But currents that run .5 to 2 knots keeps the work level up and dive time constrained. Sometimes I just have to stand up and stumble thru the shallower rapids. I even log all these dives as it gives me a place to record the treasures I find on every dive.

awap - you talking about the Comal? I'm up in Austin and my son and I have been giving this one some thought. I think we're going to give it a try mid August.

 

[MikeFerrara]

You folks that have shore access to the ocean are making me jealous.

Our local dives are lakes and quarries. We do some long shallow dives with plenty of fish. Vis varies through the year and is weather dependant. I've seen it close to 100 ft and down to almost nil. When the bass have fry and the bluegil are on nests it can get pretty commical as long as no one trys to run a class in the middle of the show. The bluegil will try to go after the bass fry and the male bass defends them. All the while the catfish will be trying to sneak up and get in the gil nests. So...the bass is chassing the bluegil and the bluegil are chasing the catfish. If it's at Haigh quarry, a big old norther pike is liable to come by and get into the mix somehow.

France park is limited access now but we used to be able to come and go as we pleased so we did lots of night dives after work. Often several huge bass would follow us the whole dive. They would use our lights to hunt by. they would pass right under you and follow your light beam out and then circle to do it again.

My wife has been wanting to dive the local river to look for artifacts. at times it's mud but at other times it looked like you might have a few feet of vis. You can wade most of it but we've found a few holes that are a little deeper and the current is manageable...we wade it and swim it all the time.

When we were going to Missouri alot we had a lot of fun poking around the Roubidoux cavern with my son. The cavern is large with lots of fish and little corners to look in and a max depth of about 45 ft

 

[Green_Manelishi]

Wetsuit. Single HP80 steel tank. Al Backplate. 5# weightbelt. (I can use a SS BP with no weightbelt but my trim is not as good)

 

[Scuba_Jenny]

You folks that have shore access to the ocean are making me jealous.

Does it help that I am grateful?

 

[ReefGuy]

Shallowest dive was 6', but that was a working dive.

Best dive is Venice beach. 13'-20' in a low current environment looking for treasure in 2 hour increments. Vis is within acceptable range for me, too. Nothing is more stress relieving than this dive.

 

[lamont]

I was going to specifically ask about shallow dives but then decided to add the "or" and also ask what types of dives you enjoy the most. Why discriminate on the bases of depth on way or the other?

My current favorite dives happen to be the deepest ones anyway. We scooter down to 120, take a sharp left and scooter "under" the areas where recreational divers go, then come back up to 100 and scooter out a little over 3,000 ft. We hit a spot where the 100 fsw contour has been ripped into by an underwater landslide and it takes another dip down to 120 and back up, which is generally about where we turn around. Its just kind of cool visiting somewhere that I know something about the geological history (although nobody knows exactly when the slide occured), and there's the scootering out there and back which adds to the fun...

 

[dbittner]

My favourite dives begin about the third day of a dive trip, on a dive to about 50 feet. I find such dives to be pure pleasure -- buoyancy control is effortless, my breathing and air consumption are optimal, and I feel at one with whatever we're diving -- reef, wreck, wall, whatever. On those (and subsequent dives) I feel "in the zone."

Dave