When on a typical dive vacation at a resort without your own gear, AL80s are what you get, and many of the dives you want to do will take you to 100 feet. In some cases (like the Spiegel Grove in Florida), it is a choice of doing the dive on an AL80 or staying on the boat. I'll do the dive. (Probably this Saturday, BTW.)
I know what you mean, but in many resort area dives, reacting to circumstances can be a perfectly understandable approach, especially when you are talking about multi-level diving. Here are some examples:
- Many of the best dives on the Great Barrier Reef are bommies, coral formations that look like isolated skyscrapers. A typical dive starts at a known depth and spirals up the bommie in a continuous change of depth.
- Many dives start you at one location to view a specific site and then move you to another, shallower location. It is sometimes difficult to tell exactly how long you will be at the first site, so you have no choice but to react to the circumstances.
- Sometimes the unexpected happens. On a recent dive, our group changed its planned beginning when we saw a manta ray getting cleaned at nearly 90 feet. We watched it for a while, and then stayed a little longer when it left and was replaced at the cleaning station by a spotted eagle ray that had patiently waited its turn. We moved to a shallower depth where we encountered another interesting sight that caught our attention. Then we went to the top of the reef (about 20 feet) where we finished a relaxing dive of close to 60 minutes on our AL80s.
