Has anybody ever done this?

[hellhole]

I am sure everyone starts fast...that goes the same for me... as there are so many fish and creatures to see...

Later i start to get interested in their behaviors... what they were doing and stuff...

Seen cuttlefish hatch, seen nudi laying eggs.. see flamboyant cuttlefish hunt, mating madrain fish, feeding frogfish, nudi moving around, blue ring octo hunt.. well that was in a distance. ..

 

[RJP]

It seems that the slower I go, the more I see.

Has anybody else done this? Just found a likely-looking spot and hung out to see what happened, and what crawled out of the woodwork when it thought you were gone?

I do it all the time, for exactly the reasons you state. It can get cold here locally, but in tropical locations it's great.

In Truk, the best parts of many dives was doing 20min of deco at the top of one of the kingposts that come up to 15-20ft. Teaming with life; everything from tiny things in cracks and crevices to big things swimming by.

Similarly, in Bonaire, I would love to hang out atop the reef at 15ft and watch the world go by. Cayman? Look out into the dark blue and wait.

Get back on the boat to find that no one but my buddy and I saw the sharks, squadron of eagle rays, frog fish, seahorse, etc, etc

 

[Wookie]

Most of the time, actually. I'll find a nice spot of reef (although it could be a rock, piece of ledge, or a sunken barge) and sit long past when I should have come up. It's very zen, and you'd be surprised at the amount of life that won't be bothered by you.

 

[jeffromonty]

A couple weeks ago on Palancar Caves in Cozumel we went looking for a group of Black Tip Reef Sharks and found them. We were on top of the reef found us a little hole and sat there for about 30 min watching the sharks move about. It was exciting watching the sharks and other fish interact as if we were not even there. Most of my diving has been in Cozumel so the option of staying in one spot is not an option very often but the currents were almost non existent on this day.

 

[robertarak]

I had 2 brothers in an AOW class that were "cover as much ground as you can" divers. To see as much as they could, they felt they had to race around to find it and see it. Even during class they were like this. After several talks and de-briefs, I added an additional dive to their AOW. Fish ID / PPB dive confined to a 10' by 10' space on a small wall. They were both very unhappy...VERY unhappy. We spent 30 min not leaving that 10' by 10' area, practicing PPB and making notes about what we saw. At the end of the dive these two unhappy brothers were smiling ear to ear and just could not wait to tell me about everything they saw. They were SO excited. They both gave me big hugs and thanked me "making" them see what they never knew was there.

 

[DeputyDan]

My daughter and I were the only two divers with a DM on an afternoon dive in Saba.
We told the DM that if it was OK with him we would stay in one spot for the entire dive.
He was like - "awesome"
He never gets to do that working with guests all the time.

 

[TSandM]

Last year when I was doing my DM, I spent a very long time waiting for my "rescue". I waited in one spot for my buddy to find me and had a very fun time watching the crayfish clean out their houses when I put little rocks in

This is actually what got me thinking about it. I spent 30 minutes lying on a featureless silt floor as a "missing diver" once. I was pretty bored for about ten minutes, and then all the tiny things came out of the bottom and started going about their lives -- worms, tiny crabs and shrimp, all kinds of stuff. I got fascinated with the ecosystem in a place I thought barren. Ever since, I have wondered what I'm missing.

Lowviz, merino wool against my skin would ensure a VERY short dive. You can't scratch very well through a dry suit . . .

 

[djtimmy77]

macro photogs at the Blue Heron Bridge do this all the time. I haven't quite gotten to the "sit in one spot for half an hour" but tend to go super slow to try and see as many things as possible. Have spent entire 2-3 hour dives in 6-8' of water.

 

[Subcooled]

a solo cert that will open up a most interesting "closed to solo" quarry.

What is this? I do dive solo, but I do not have a solo cert.
I do not have a cert to s h i t either, by the way.

________
(hey, why is that s h i t -word censored? It's standard vocabulary)

 

[SubMariner]

It seems that the slower I go, the more I see.

I keep playing with the idea of going on a dive and not going anywhere -- just parking myself in an interesting-looking spot and sitting there for a half hour or so, and just watching what goes by and how life plays out. The only reasons I haven't done it is that sitting still gets cold awfully fast, and I don't think I could find a dive buddy who'd be willing to do it with me.

Has anybody else done this? Just found a likely-looking spot and hung out to see what happened, and what crawled out of the woodwork when it thought you were gone?

Absolutely... do it all the time. It's called u/w photography. (Or in my case, the u/w photographer's "bird dog" )

Quite often when we are on a liveaboard we go to the dive guides right off the bat & tell them that while we will be jumping in the water with the group, we won't be going on the speedfest that is called "the guided tour". More often than not we are on the same outcropping of coral when they go out as when they come back.

How else do you get to see something like this?