Has anybody ever done this?

[drbill]

Of course... many times. I used to sit and observe one small area (say a few yards across) to look at the microcosm... do pay attention to "the small stuff." Amazing what you can find. Unfortunately, as my eyes aged, I now have trouble locating even the big stuff!

 

[lowviz]

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

That is what I thought before I actually tried it, unbelievably smooth and silky. Give it a go...


-try starting with a pair of these: http://www.nordicoutdoor.co.uk/aclima-hotwool-ulfrotte-socks.html

 

[g1138]

Every science dive I did w/ the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project was like that.
It had it's perks.

 

[Darnold9999]

One of the reasons I dive solo. Got tired of chasing divers all over the reef. Now I tell instabuddies that if you want to dive with me I dive SLOWLY and will wave by by and be there when they get back. Most try it for one or two dives and then get bored, occassionally I get the opposite reaction and they love all the stuff they start to see.

Once spent an entire dive in one spot at 60 feet almost sleeping watching the creatures in the sand and the local cleaning station. Near the end of a liveaboard trip, the dive was almost two hours long on a 100cf tank. Very relaxing.

Hard to do really long dives like this here however. Much too cold to stop moving for more than 5 or 10 minutes.

 

[emoreira]

We use to go to dive with sea lions here in South America. The idea of the dive is to go down near the sea lion rest place and stay there waiting for them.
As soon as they see us, they start to gain confidence and we start to play with them. There is no need to move, just rest on our knees in the bottom and they will swim around and play with us.

 

[boulderjohn]

I was once diving near Cabo in Mexico. There was not a lot of coral on that dive, so fish were pretty much what you wanted to look at. We would be swimming along with nothing to see, and then we would run into a school of fish. Then they would be gone and there would be nothing to see. When I realized that they were all moving, I thought, "Hmmm. What if we stayed still?" So we just hung out and, sure enough, we had a steady parade of fish passing by.

That's how many of our dives in the Galapagos were done as well. We saw many hundreds of hammerheads that way.

 

[FinnMom]

Yes! At night, at the Gubal barge! Would have been incredible anyway but watching my kid have a blast on one of her first warm waters dives was one for the memories list In capitol letters!

 

[miked]

Sure.
I've spent an hour or so, at 15-20 ft, never leaving a car-sized coral head. So much good "little stuff" that I sometimes forgot that I had a camera.

 

[iamrushman]

yes it's the small things that go on that is the major activity in the ocean...

 

[Steve_C]

One of my top 5 dives. Was buddied with a newly certified diver on her second dive and second ocean dive. We were on the Markham which is nicknamed the Murkham due to the frequent lower viz there. Large ship on its side in 80 ft of water. Top side rises to 40 ft from the surface. We hit it with no current and truely epic viz. We spent the last 2/3 of the dive just floating over the top edge of the wreck. Above us swirled giant bait balls. Barracuda patrolled the outer edges of the balls. Amberjack crashed the balls. Schools of small bait fish swam straight down like cascading silver rain. All around us were various small fish. If we looked down over the edge of the wreck and saw big groupers and sand tigers on patrol. Everywhere we looked there was stuff and it was moving and it seemed like we could see forever. A national geographic 40 minutes.

Several times when there is a bottom murk area I have gone down to just above the murk and hung there in clear water and watched various critters come cruising by. Did have to move once a month ago when an infatuated large remora tried to become one with me.