Most of my diving is in the Great Lakes. At 30 feet, there is little to see or do - the winter storms pound everything at that depth to shreds and there just isn't an abundance of reef life to marvel at.
It bears repeating/emphasizing/repeating again: Deep diving is not and should not be for everyone. Deep diving is more challenging, the training and equipment more intense and the dangers far greater than shallow diving. There tends to be a presumption that divers who explore the deep are somewhat daft and there maybe some truth to that. As individuals, divers who routinely dive deep can be arrogant and irascible. Certainly the folks doing deep dives tend to be less tolerant of sloppy habits and poorly thought out practices but that attitude is what keeps us safe in an unsafe environment. Remember: when things go bad in 30 feet of water, it's rarely a big deal - and the CESA is always an option; when anything goes bad in 300 feet of water, it's a very big deal - and there may not be any options.
The challenge is part of the adventure - as crazy as that may sound. I like the discipline, the intensity, the focus required to dive beyond recreational depths. Beyond the Zen aspects of deep diving, however, are the shipwrecks, the living history of the past couple of centuries. Because the water here is cold and fresh, wrecks in the deeper water can survive for ages. Dropping down on an 150 year old wooden schooner with a mast or two still standing, the deck still intact and the cargo still in the hold, is a magic experience. I like a good warm-water reef dive as much as the next fellow, I suppose, but the wrecks are what got me started diving ages ago and are still the primary reason I dive.
If you've made the decision that deep diving isn't for you, you've made a good choice. Ego does push a lot of divers into deep diving, where the first thing they should learn is to leave their egos at the waterline. If you're contemplating diving deeper, get serious, get the training, get the gear, get lots of practice and proceed with extreme caution.
If you're interested in seeing what deep diving in the Great Lakes looks like, here are links to a couple of YouTube videos. The first, the
Eber Ward, is a "shallow" deep wreck at about 140ft of water in the Straits of Mackinaw between Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas. The second, the
Carl Bradley, is a "deep" deep wreck at about 355ft of water off the NW coast (the "pinkie") of Michigan. There are hundreds and hundreds more wrecks like these two out there.