Tolerating low visibility

[u4ia]

How have you folks learned to cope with low or no visibility diving?

I hate when I have no visual reference or when its so turbid that I cant see beyond my arm. I dont panic, but I start to get freaked and my imagination gets a bit wild. eg spooked easily by trees and stuff that suddenly loom out of the murkiness. I find it very unpleasant diving when the visibility is less than, say 8 feet. many of the local lakes and quarries around me are pretty murky and I am finding that I really cant enjoy that kind of diving. although I get a bit nervous, it seems less of an issue when night diving for some reason. (tho I cant say that night diving is really a favorite of mine...) I could just not dive those places, but thats not too realistic, and poor visibility is always a potential risk in many places, so I would like to get better at handling it.

Since I dont have the luxury or the inclination to move to cave country or Bonaire I am wondering if others have had this experience and what you have done to tackle this issue.

Thanks for your input.

 

[skresch]

Yeah I know what you're talking about, using a reel and a strong primary light made it a little better for me.

 

[GA Under Water]

How have you folks learned to cope with low or no visibility diving?

I hate when I have no visual reference or when its so turbid that I cant see beyond my arm. I dont panic, but I start to get freaked and my imagination gets a bit wild. eg spooked easily by trees and stuff that suddenly loom out of the murkiness. I find it very unpleasant diving when the visibility is less than, say 8 feet. many of the local lakes and quarries around me are pretty murky and I am finding that I really cant enjoy that kind of diving. although I get a bit nervous, it seems less of an issue when night diving for some reason. (tho I cant say that night diving is really a favorite of mine...) I could just not dive those places, but thats not too realistic, and poor visibility is always a potential risk in many places, so I would like to get better at handling it.

Since I dont have the luxury or the inclination to move to cave country or Bonaire I am wondering if others have had this experience and what you have done to tackle this issue.

Thanks for your input.

My first OW Checkout was in 2' vis.

In unknown murky water I had to finally sit down and force myself to realize. "It's Hollywood that makes you think these things. Nothing in this water is going to 'Get you' and you aren't going to fall into the Abyss." Finally, my tanks started lasting even longer and I use underwater trees to practice my bouyancy. Also, in fresh water, no need to worry about harming Coral and there is no "Abyss" and if you only have 2 feet vis then what is a "Silt out" going to harm. All trees look like they should be near a house in a Horror flick underwater.

 

[NorthWoodsDiver]

I happen to enjoy the no viz dives, they keep things interesting cause you never know whats in front of you. 2 days ago I dove in the worst viz of my life and enjoyed every minute.

 

[TSandM]

Oh, coping with limited visibility . . . I feel your pain!

I don't get too wound up about what might be out there, though. I get disoriented. If I can't see something to serve as a reference, I don't know whether I'm up, down or sideways. And I lived through the first summer I dove in constant fear of buddy separation, which is so easy to do in low viz.

A number of things have helped. As somebody mentioned, a really good primary light helps a lot -- It cuts through the murk to some extent, can give you a view of the bottom when you otherwise can't see it, and serves as a TREMENDOUS aid to keeping buddy pairs together, and reunited them if they're slightly separated. You can see the lights through the haze a lot further than you can see the dark mass of a diver.

Getting my weight distributed so that I can hover horizontally without moving helped a lot. Once I could trust that, if I did nothing, I'd stay where I was, I could cope with some of the disorientation better. Diving doubles has made this even better, because they're very stable, and give so much proprioceptive feedback when you move.

Diving with buddies who dive to stay found has helped a lot, too. When you know that, if you turn your head just a little bit, your buddy is going to be right where he's supposed to be, it lowers the anxiety level a lot.

Learning to shoot a bag for ascent, to give myself a visual reference for vertical, was a lifesaver.

And finally, practice. I've got over 300 dives now, about 3/4s of them in Puget Sound, and slowly, I've gotten more and more adapted to our visibility. I was amazed to take a class this spring and go down and do some exercises in midwater, and have some divers who were NOT local and not accustomed to our conditions find those same exercises very challenging. It showed me how far I've come, just by perservering.

Good luck with it.

 

[Meng_Tze]

where the bubbles go is up and depth is what your gauge tells you....

 

[The Kraken]

Ya learn to go slow, slower, and yet slower still . . .

the K

 

[MBH]

I was fortunate, in that my very first cert dives were in very low vis. At times the vis was blown out to zero. Diving here in GA it's mostly lakes and quarrys. Low vis is just a given if you dive here.

Some things that I've learned that help me stay comfortable in low vis are; the whole team needs to slow down, stay close to your buddy and always keep them in your peripheral vision, keep your light pointed so it's beam is out in front of your buddy where he/she can see it, and a little trick for holding a safety stop is to watch the suspended particulate matter.

Oh yeah, learn how to signal and communicate with your light!

 

[Spratman]

It's what we do....

In the NE Atlantic, having good viz is a luxury. Most of the time it's not that great. But if you can dive in the soup, it makes anything about 25ft, awesome!

 

[maj2]

I also tend to enjoy my low viz dives.
While great visibility is definitely awe inspiring, I find that low visibility forces you to focus on what you can see in the couple of feet in front of you. You often see many details that you might otherwise miss with the "distractions" of the vistas of clean, clear water.
You quickly learn to love each dive for what it offers.