Wildlife fans: Why do you go deep?

[gsk3]

This video should have cloud sponges, but for some reason it wont play on my Vimeo

McCurdy Point - Website on Vimeo

Nice sponges. The video works on mine.

 

[ianr33]

I've heard of the sponge belt in Cayman,

The sponges in Cayman are seriously cool IMHO. They seem to start getting big around 200 feet,although that may be coincidence as in many areas the wall goes vertical at that depth. Supposedly they get even larger as you get deeper.

Neat photo here; [url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/courtneyplatt/1579711881/#/

 

[limeyx]

Nice sponges. The video works on mine.

Thanks. The best sponges we found were around 120 feet. There were some deeper on this spot, but they were awesome at 120

 

[anytime]

I dive off of the NC and SC coasts. The main reason I wanted to go deeper was to see the bigger fish. You would be shocked at all the species of of fish that inhabit the live bottom areas from 180 to 250'. During the summer I did a long dive on an live bottom area in 200'. I was surrounded by 100+ lb warsaw grouper. You can see them sometimes in shallow water but not that many at one time and certainly not that big. Even the hangs can be amazing. This past weekend during the hang we had a school of wahoo pass by and it was followed by a lone sailfish.

 

[ucfdiver]

This post by Bob inspired me to ask a question that's been lingering for some time. In most locales, life gets scarcer when you go deeper. Yet deep diving has some rewards, biologically speaking. I've heard of the sponge belt in Cayman, and the PNW has its own fun stuff deep. Southern Florida seems to have some interesting wildlife deeper. And, I suppose if you had a hankering to see the big lionfish that'd probably be a reason to too?

What wildlife do you see in technical depths (let's call it >130ft for this discussion) that you can't see anywhere else? Was that the reason you got trained, or is it just a happy side-effect?

I got trained for Indian Springs.

I'd rather see an hours worth of wildlife shallow than 10 minutes worth of wildlife deeper when it comes to ocean dives.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Thanks. The best sponges we found were around 120 feet. There were some deeper on this spot, but they were awesome at 120

You guys should try for Nootka Sound sometime ... that place was amazing for deep diving. Cloud sponges down to about 150 ... then the gorgonians started showing up. And lots of strawberry anemones filling in the gaps ...

 

[gsk3]

anytime - NC is right at the top of my list. One of these days I'll make it there!

Bob - Them's some serious invertibrates. Wow. Have to make it up there too now :-D

 

[kierentec]

sharks

We don't see a ton of sharks on the shallower dives here in st. croix. we'll see black tips and grey reefs on occasion on the walls, but it's not something we use as a selling point. deeper than 150, though, everything changes. almost guaranteed at least one reef shark on every dive past 150. every hammerhead and bull I've seen here in over 3 years has been deeper than 180 as well.
aside from the sharks, the topography is breathtaking.

we have a ton of lionfish "dens" (just caverns packed full of the bastards) below 200ft.
so, the majority of our dives end up being blood baths/shark watches. it's interesting to see a monster hammerhead appear out of the deep while you're trying to pull a 14 inch lionfish off your spear...

 

[GrimSleeper]

Ditto for sharks...

We do get a fair few reef sharks in recreational depths here (not to mention Scalloped Hammerheads and the odd Silky or Galapagos shark), but down past 150 feet or so is where we're more likely to see large numbers of Grey reefs, big Silvertips, and the occasional Great Hammerhead. Plus, because the water is ridiculously warm and clear, there are really delicate corals past 200 feet and all sorts of cool little critters... Anyone who trots out the old 'there's nothing to see down there anyway' line just hasn't actually been down there!

 

[Kevrumbo]

Huge Groupers to "pet" inside deep wrecks; there were two monstrous sized specimens inside the Aircraft Carrier HMS Hermes at 48m. . .

File:Epinephelus malabaricus.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia