Best Dive Ever

[sapphire]

just one great dive. but the one that comes to my heart is a night Manta dive on the Big Island of Hawaii. I could have watched them forever, so graceful and SO close! Many times I had to duck!

A close second was seeing dolphins underwater in the Florida Keys -- they were checking us out & it was really impressive. I was more afraid of them than of sharks -- they are realllllly big!

sapphire

 

[MantaRey]

it's hard for me to pick one, especially since I don't dive much outside of the usual.

however, a dream of mine is to one day boat out past the continental slope, and do a blue water dive waiting for some sailfish or thresher sharks...oh yeah.

...one day.

 

[victoriawtx]

in Lake Travis, in Austin, Texas.

Where everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong. LOL

That was the best dive ever.

 

[drbill]

This dive happened more than 30 years ago at Pirate's Cove near Long Point on Santa Catalina Island. Some of you will probably accuse me of indulging in creative writing, but I assure you this is all true and my dive buddy is still alive and well in Seattle to verify it.

One of my high school students asked me to go diving with him since he had a boat (we faculty couldn't even afford a car on our pay, but some of our students had their own yachts... his was just a whaler).

We went up the coast to the dive site and entered the water. We had just descended and were both vertical in the water checking one another when a harbor seal swam up to us. It swam around us a few times, then went down to the bottom (about 30 ft)... and brought up a sea cucumber. It "pushed" the sea cucumber towards us. As it sank, I retrieved it, brought it up and pushed it towards the harbor seal. The two of us ended up playing catch with that harbor seal for a while before it got bored and swam away.

We continued our dive and I decided to look into a large crevice in the rocks. I placed my hands on both sides of the crevice and tried to look in (no lights). I should add these were still the days when we dove with backpacks rather than BCD's and only a depth gauge so we had little equipment extending from our bodies like today. All of a sudden the surge forced me to do a 1 1/2 forward somersault INTO the crevice. My dive buddy panicked for a moment. Then, just as gracefully, the surge expelled me doing a perfect 1 1/2 reverse somersault. As my amazed buddy watched the crevice spit me out, he noticed a large moray eel following me out in a hurry with what my buddy claimed was a startled look on its face. "What the H was that??"

Although there have been many other great dives over the decades, this one has always stuck in my mind. In fact when my former student came back to the island a few years ago for a mini-reunion, we both told his new wife that story (and were pretty consistent on the details).

Then there was the dive where...

Dr. Bill

 

[Snowbear]

....It was Summer Solstice, but mostly cloudy day, out with a couple guys who wanted to do some exploration dives. Dive #2 of the day was an un-named pinnacle at the edge of some cove about 5 miles out of Whittier (AK). The guys had found this pinnacle a couple weeks before and wanted to check it out. One of the guys is an instructor who was diving with an AOW student and were going to do a Naturalist dive (I think?). They stayed above 80'. The other is the guy who owns the boat - I dove with him (well, sort of).We knew this would likely be a deep dive based on the sonar scoping done ahead of time. I had my HP120 and 30cf pony (well-secured and a tight grip on the reins so he wouldn't buck me off!). Anyhow , dropped down the wall of this pinnacle, kind of checking stuff out, but mostly descending. Viz was awesome (for here) at about 40-50', until we hit ~85'. Then it opened up to ~70-80'!! At the edge of a popular certifying agency's published recreational depth limit, I spotted some odd-looking white things below me, so I checked my air, peeked at my 'puter, saw that my "buddy" was still in the general vicinity and cruised on down. Turns out these things are Cloud Sponges. There were dozens of them. They are kind of funnel-shaped with a thick "stalk". The sides of the funnel were kind of wavey and about an inch thick. The funnel opening at the widest part was as wide as my forearm and hand are long (~18"). They are about as tall as they are wide. Even cooler were all the Crinoids that were perching on the edges and sides of these sponges. There was literally tons of other life down there including the cute little fire scallops that tried to "attack", but I've babbled on long enough so I won't bore you with the rest of the details. The rest of the dive continued to be cool - VERY slow ascent checking stuff out on the wall and in all the little rock cracks on the way up. Paused for 2 minutes at 60', 5 min @ 40'. Buddy had enough air to finish up at 15 and I still had plenty. My trusty little Suunto liked my deco so far and back at 60' had actually "removed" my ceiling and ascent time and gave me "no deco" time again, so I waved bye-bye to the buddy and explored the cove between 40-30' for a while. Saw an Octopus, bunch of fish, tons of small critters under the kelp. Eventually turned around and swam back while in safety stop range. Dive time 54 minutes, max depth 149' and although I did do a midnight Solstice dive later, the prior dive ended up being about the coolest Solstice dive I could have imagined! Absolutely Awesome!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I've had a lot of "magical" diving moments ... but it would be really hard to say what was my best dive.

Could've been the dive I did last year in south Puget Sound at a place called Sunrise. It was one of those rare days when vis runs about 40 feet or so. Saw 11 wolf eels and 6 octopus on that dive. One of the female wolfies came out and played with us for a bit ... letting us pet her and rubbing her torso against our legs like a cat.

Then there was the night dive at Three Tree Point, where we spent nearly half the dive in the shallows with our lights off ... watching the dogfish hunt. You couldn't actually see the dogfish, but their swift passage through the water left a sparkling trail of phosphorescence that made it easy to see where they were.

Or perhaps a memorable dive on the USS Liberty in Bali ... intense amounts of life, and lots of structure to swim through. Nah ... that little brush with fire coral was just a bit too much fun. OK ... maybe the dive after that when we did a night dive on the Coral Gardens and all our dive lights died (cheap rental things). No worries ... at 30 fsw we could still see by moonlight, and navigate home using the lights from our hotel.

Renate's Reef in Barkley Sound ... west coast of Vancouver Island. This place is a painter's pallette of color, and in a single dive we played with two octopus, one wolf eel, and cautiously observed a lingcod that had to weigh in somewhere around 150 lbs.

But the dives that made the most impression on me were the three that I took with my wife last year to observe Olive ... a local giant pacific octopus ... hatching her young. The dive site really isn't all that much .... a local classroom, really. We'd been observing this den for about seven months when the eggs finally started hatching. Now, if you've never seen a newborn octopus, here's your chance. We called this one "Swee'Pea" .... and it's less than one minute old ... and roughly the size of a common house fly ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[StacyT]

I would have to say my best dive was in Monterey. After diving Hawaii, I was telling my buddies " What can you see in Monterey? " Well I dropped down in about 30', and started looking around. The viz was only about 10'. We swam along for about 10 minutes, I kept seeing a glimpse of something moving rather fast, out of the corner of my eyes. My buddy stopped to take a look at a starfish, and then he starts to point to something behind me. I turn around, and there's a Harbor Seal not more than a couple of feet away. The Seal came right up, and started checking me out, I could tell he was just as curious as I was. After a minute or so I reached out slowly, and pet him on his head. Needless to say we had another dive buddy for the rest of the dive. Even followed us to the surface. He actually looked kind of sad when we started up the boat, and took off.

 

[scubasean]

StacyT once bubbled...
I would have to say my best dive was in Monterey. After diving Hawaii, I was telling my buddies " What can you see in Monterey? " Well I dropped down in about 30', and started looking around. The viz was only about 10'. We swam along for about 10 minutes, I kept seeing a glimpse of something moving rather fast, out of the corner of my eyes. My buddy stopped to take a look at a starfish, and then he starts to point to something behind me. I turn around, and there's a Harbor Seal not more than a couple of feet away. The Seal came right up, and started checking me out, I could tell he was just as curious as I was. After a minute or so I reached out slowly, and pet him on his head. Needless to say we had another dive buddy for the rest of the dive. Even followed us to the surface. He actually looked kind of sad when we started up the boat, and took off.

Another Scubaboard member and I were diving in Monterey a month or so ago and had a similar experience. We came upon several sea lions that appeared rather friendly. They tended to dart in and out between us...One kinda settled on the bottom watching us, and let us get within a few feet when he darted *much* closer and then zoomed away...

Loved every minute...

 

[klausbh]

The best dive ever is always the next one!

-Klaus

 

[Amanda]

I think my best dive ever was the first night dive I did. I discovered fluorescent plancton and just the feeling of swmming in all those tiny *stars* was just... amazing.
Then, in the same dive, I discovered a baby tigershark, just 60 cm long.

Wow. :wacko: