Why do you dive so deep?

[Tigerman]

If youre doing multiple dive days, lots of ops (and divers) want to make sure you have your deepest dive first and try to make the plan for their 2/3/4 dive day so thats what happens. However, if you dive all day at deep sites that means you need to make sure you actually get there.
Now the VALIDITY of the first dive to be the deepest is a different matter entirely, but its how its generally been in the past.

Now, overstaying there is of course fully possible considering the fact that if you zip down to 110 and stay there for the duration of your BT you're going to be at 4,3ata for 25 minutes and with a half decent sac of .5cfm that ammounts to just short of 54 cfm out of your 77ish cfm tank, but that would just be REALLY bad planning and/or paying attention if you intended to do a 1-hr dive...
If you planned to do a 25 minute square profile it would be just about bang on though - if you and your buddy can surface safely from 110ft with 23cf of air that is...

 

[drrich2]

I've dove 'deep' (for me) for different reasons:

1.) Deep diver course, so I could dive to the recommended recreational limit, under instructor supervision, and perhaps get an idea whether I was particularly susceptible to nitrogen narcosis. I've seen threads on the forum about people getting narc.'d, apparently confused & wandering off way deeper than planned, without evident awareness they were running out of gas... Didn't want to be one of those. Since I do some solo diving, it was all the more important, since narcosis susceptibility is individual (and variable within an individual over different days).

2.) Dove deep to reach wrecks, to see either the wreck or life on it (e.g.: goliath grouper).

3.) Dove deep in a quarry to test out my cold tolerance in 45 degree water in a given exposure setup (5 mm wet suit, 7 mm hood, 5 mm gloves, SeaSoft Sunray boots that are intended for tropical diving), and get a sense of how I handled that. If I ever have reason to dive elsewhere in really cold water, I know I need thicker, cold water boots, but aside from cold feet I was fine for several minutes down there.

Richard.

 

[Tigerman]

Try without a hood and see how THAT change everything up - its kinda scary

 

[MichigandiverJon]

Try without a hood and see how THAT change everything up - its kinda scary

First time I went below a thermocline without a hood, I was quite shocked by how much my head instantly started to ache. (It really hurt) I'm perfectly fine in 38 degree water with a 7mil hood though.

 

[swimmer_spe]

Was going to do this as a poll, but since I do not understand deep divers, I assume all of my options would be stupid. Cancel the poll.

The whole premise of my question is targetted towards divers that push depth limits and as a consequence NDL limits.

I am happy to dive 30 foot dives all week. Even on a live aboard.

Why do many (some, all, most) divers dive deeper than is required? Because you can?

Sometimes the answer is that is where the stuff is. But when there is something not so deep, why do you go deep?

Why dive? Because I want to see what is below the surface.

Why dive deep? Because, I want to see what is down there. Even if it is a barren wasteland, I will know.

I will not dive deep at a site I know has nothing to see. However, just like what happens as you cross a desert, or go up a mountain, as you go deeper, the topography and the biology changes. Some stuff wont grow at certain depths.

 

[Frosty]

I dive "deep" when theres a reason to dive deep. A wreck,a cave,an interesting coral. Basicly if the stuff to see is at that depth I plan my dive around it.