Are you an interactive diver?

[PnL]

Just want to know how many of you ScubaBoarders interact with your diving environment and how often. When I first envisioned myself as a diver I always thought I'd be an observer only. But there are so many things the ocean offers besides its diverse beauty - such as lobsters, scallops, clams, halibut, bass, etc . I love seafood and I can imagine what it would be like to catch your own fresh seafood and have a feast! Then there's those that wreck dive and possibly hunt for some souvenirs, or perhaps there are those that interact with their diving environment in other ways.

 

[stiebs]

I started my diving as a spearfisher (snorkel only). A couple of years on I started SCUBA, but have never taken a spear out with tanks.

Aside from the fact that it'd just be too easy to get a good, out fishing with a snorkel gives me the option of staying out for 3 or 4 hours seaching for prey.

I hunt using SCUBA when I'm out searching for mussels, scallops, abalone and crays (or lobsters, for you American types)

 

[danw2002]

i am an active observer....there that is what i really wanted to vote. but that was not there, so the closest thing to that was observer/hunter. i look at everything, and sometimes will interact with the creatures .......under the sea...:band: oh oh, started to sing on ya, ok...any way i just love to look and gentlely interact with anything and everything(as long as i dont harm anything, of course some things should not be handled at all..) and i find i enjoy my dives greatly this way....ok it is late....lights out...:bonk:

 

[Northeastwrecks]

I do not spearfish or hunt lobsters. However, I am an active wreck diver who always is on the lookout for artifacts.

 

[cyklon_300]

out of necessity. Living in the PNW as a poor grad student...many times, if we didn't bring home something from our dives to eat, it was the go-hungry diet.

Lingcod, cabezon, crabs, scallops, rockfish, abalone...repeat as necessary.

After this subsistence phase was over, I became strictly an observer, then a photographer. (I guess that's part of observing, tho...)

I will occassionally hunt now, but prefer taking pictures.

 

[Stone]

This ratio is pretty accurate because about 25 dives a year are on vacation (shooting pictures), and the rest of the year we don't leave the dock without our spearguns.

 

[-=>Larry<=-]

but I voted 50/50 because I volunteer at Aquarena Spings quite a bit. Precious little hunting [especially there] but hydrilla pulling, gardening [moving native plants to try to encourage their growth] and the occaisional glass bottom boat widow cleaning!

Interact can be more than "merely' hunting!

 

[Scubaroo]

I voted strictly observer, although I did go on my first bughunt on the weekend (caught 3 but all were undersized and released ). I think there are degrees of interaction - I'll pick up trash at a dive site, and am likely to go lobstering again, but I doubt I'll take up scalloping, which was popular with other divers on the boat I was on - although I tried some scallop, and it was absolutely delicious, taking scallops seems a bit more invasive than picking a lobster up off the bottom - sure, in both cases you're removing an animal from the environment, but lobstering doesn't require you to pry stuff off a rock, potentially damaging other sealife, and doesn't leave the bottom littered with empty scallop shells.

 

[Lawman]

:cold:

 

[Lawman]

What I meant to say was- If you wreck dive in the
Great Lakes you really can't touch or take anything.
The artifacts are all protected by law. There really isn't
much else to interact with.