Understand varies and OW classes. Ours can vary from 3 to 30. But that looked better than 30.
Quarries - What's up with that?
- Thread starter WeRtheOcean
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I don't have to get up early to get to the boat. I don't have to find the boat if I get lost underwater. I can dive as many tanks as I want (although, for some reason, it usually winds up being two anyway). I get to tell adventurous stories of close calls with man-eating bluegills. As long as I can see as far as my buddy (which is not all the time) the visibility is great. Fun people in the parking lot. A nice day at the quarry is great.
The quarry dives are my training ground for the Great Lakes. The Lakes usually have much better viz.
The quarries are cheap ($25/day), good times with friends, always neat stuff to see underwater. I prefer bluegills to the freaking catfish (I hate catfish).
Quarries are the place to train, try out new gear before you take it on the lake. It’s always funny watching the warm water divers come out to the quarry. They usually stay on the shallow side. Deep side too cold for them. One couple trained in Florida once tried the deep end with 3mm suits and full foot fins. They couldn’t handle doing deeper than the thermocline which was at about 25ft, while I was laughing through my reg below them at 40ft - their reactions were great. Talk about flapping arms and legs.
The quarries are cheap ($25/day), good times with friends, always neat stuff to see underwater. I prefer bluegills to the freaking catfish (I hate catfish).
Quarries are the place to train, try out new gear before you take it on the lake. It’s always funny watching the warm water divers come out to the quarry. They usually stay on the shallow side. Deep side too cold for them. One couple trained in Florida once tried the deep end with 3mm suits and full foot fins. They couldn’t handle doing deeper than the thermocline which was at about 25ft, while I was laughing through my reg below them at 40ft - their reactions were great. Talk about flapping arms and legs.
Divingblueberry
Contributor
I can understand one doesn't see the thrill in quarry diving. But like many other said, it is a great place to practice, and have nice casual conversations.
15 minute drive from home, no headaches... I showed up every week-end last summer, chat with people, find a buddy and go for couple of dives. As a new diver, I like it because there's no pressure and I can practice and get to learn since couple of dive shops use that quarry for the OW and AOW certs. I don't think I'll go as often next summer (so many wrecks to see in the St-Laurence) but I value a lot what I learned there and the people I met.
And even when I'll be more experienced, I think it is a great place to try new gear, and meet people.
15 minute drive from home, no headaches... I showed up every week-end last summer, chat with people, find a buddy and go for couple of dives. As a new diver, I like it because there's no pressure and I can practice and get to learn since couple of dive shops use that quarry for the OW and AOW certs. I don't think I'll go as often next summer (so many wrecks to see in the St-Laurence) but I value a lot what I learned there and the people I met.
And even when I'll be more experienced, I think it is a great place to try new gear, and meet people.
Yeah, when you are 1,000 km from the nearest ocean, and the Great Lakes are farther away, any body of water becomes more interesting. I wish we had some quarries around here - it would be a nice change from the monotony of the silty bottom of mountain lakes. The nice thing about fresh water diving is there is no need to rinse your gear (which I consider an upside).
Yes for all of the above reasons. Don't get me wrong, I love a good sea dive but our local quarries (Vobster in Somerset or NDAC on the England / Wales border) are a great plan B. At 90m, NDAC is a must for tech divers before the more challenging deep Channel dives.
It's quite common to plan a boat dive with mates just to get blown out the day before. Rather than cancel we just decamp inland, simple. I'd much rather do that than stay home putting up shelves or mowing the lawn.
It's quite common to plan a boat dive with mates just to get blown out the day before. Rather than cancel we just decamp inland, simple. I'd much rather do that than stay home putting up shelves or mowing the lawn.
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Last week I did a night dive without using my torches, first night dive in 20 years or 15
Only 15m so no need for gauges, navigated by the moon gliding through the coral that
I could barely make out, and the sharks and the rays and the turtles and the million fish
that I couldn't
and then I approached the glow that was home, over a hill it became brighter then around another
and there they all were, the bunch of divers under the boat with all their star wars sabres from all the
episodes, arguing with nature and blasting the bejesus out of everything with their millions and billions
of lumens
Diving only for diving
Only 15m so no need for gauges, navigated by the moon gliding through the coral that
I could barely make out, and the sharks and the rays and the turtles and the million fish
that I couldn't
and then I approached the glow that was home, over a hill it became brighter then around another
and there they all were, the bunch of divers under the boat with all their star wars sabres from all the
episodes, arguing with nature and blasting the bejesus out of everything with their millions and billions
of lumens
Diving only for diving
What you've missed in the videos is the experience, the practice, the learning, the extending of a person's diving repertoire/abilities.
I get it though, I really do. Until last year I had no desire to dive "cold" or "low vis" or "no fish/coral" dives. Last year I decided to "deal with it" at the local quarry because I wanted to take some classes and didn't want to take a vacation for that purpose, so I ended up at the local quarry. It was late fall, so water temps were up in the 70's at the surface, but in the 40's once you got deep, so I surely wasn't looking forward to that, having only dived tropical waters or Florida springs (a minimum 5 hour drive away) type diving previously. What I found diving there for the classes and for fun was that I became a better diver.
Obviously the classes gave me skills and experiences to make me a better diver, but that's not the end of it. I'd never experiences visibility so low before (15 ft not uncommon in the quarry, compared to the 100+ ft vis I routinely encounter in the caribbean/bahamas. That was new, and I didn't know it would impact me in any way other than disappointment. The first time I found myself in the water with no visual reference, thanks to being far enough away from anything that the low-vis resulted in me seeing nothing but water, was very disconcerting. I literally found myself close to panic, but found a way to calm myself, accept the situation, and decide on a rational path forward from the unexpected conditions I found myself in. Now I'm a lot more comfortable in low/no vis environments, and I'm comfortable doing free ascents/descents without a visual reference because I can actually practice those things in that environment, where I would never have had such an experience in the Exumas or Cozumel etc on my vacation dives. So I became a better diver with new abilities/skills and a more well-rounded repertoire of diving experience.
I learned new skills because I can take the time to do a class on the weekend, instead of only doing them when I'm on vacation far away. I've learned to dive deep, and learned to dive in a dry suit, and learned new skills becoming a rescue diver, etc, because I can dive in that quarry. The odds I would have taken those classes on vacation isn't very good because I just want to enjoy my vacation, I don't want it to be "working on classroom parts of courses" or "focusing on skills instead of enjoying the dive".
When not taking classes, I can go with my buddy and enjoy the dive, but more importantly, practice skills. I'm not setting up a camera to evaluate my finning techniques while I'm on a liveaboard dive trip, but I'll do it in the quarry at home. I'm not thinking about practicing a CESA on vacation, but I'll do it when I go to the quarry for the purpose of practicing skills. That $100 2-tank dive isn't where I want to spend time practicing skills - that's where I want to enjoy what the dive has to offer that I can't get in the quarry back home, the $10 dive in the local quarry is a great place to take off and put back on equipment etc just to keep those skills fresh.
Most importantly, though, is I get to experience a dive. I can put on my gear, get in the water, and almost effortlessly glide through water. I can look up and know there's a huge open space full of air up there and I'm breathing down here, surrounded by water. I can pause and enjoy the serenity of the bubbles being the only noise disturbing my thoughts and relaxation. Sure, I can go swim through the hoops, or check out the old excavator at the bottom of the quarry, or the number of other man-made objects there are there for me to see, or the few fish around (and some fresh-water jellyfish when lucky enough to find them around). The best part about diving in the quarry is just that I get to be diving though. I get to enjoy that underwater world that man wasn't designed to be in, and I get to have that experience just a quick drive from home.
Oh, and it costs me $350 for a year's worth of 2-tank diving days... which is a heck of a lot cheaper than any of my vacation diving.
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