Your shallowest dives-or-what kind of dives do you like the best?

[JimC]

My wife and I dived a little cave in Kentucky where our max depth was about 9 ft. Of course we had to swim our gear accross a lake and use ropes to get it up a mountain to get to the cave entrance. The entrance was a knee deep mud puddle at the bottom of a rock face. You slipped into your gear, slid down into the mud and crawled under the rock to get in. the vis wasn't too bad once we were in and there were tons of creyfish. Very silty though. Just touching a rock to tie off a line blew things out pretty good. We went to where the existing line goes through a restriction, which wasn't very far, and turned. It wasn't much of a dive but was definately an experience.

The cave I am speaking of is almost Florida like access. Park the car next to the beach, float down the resurgence and dive. Its only missing a picknick table (its under a tarp because the land owner hasn't been up in a few months) and tubers. There is a good mix of cave low silt big tunnel stuff with 10 feet of vis and zero vis sidemount holes. 30k feet mapped/lined passage, great place.

Gota be my favourite local dive site and the deepest it goes is 32 feet. Latest trip report can be found at http://scubajim.livejournal.com/1628.html?view=2908.

 

[Zeeman]

I actually quite enjoy shallow dives. One of my favourite dive sites in sydney (Shelley Beach) has a max depth of about 6 - 8m (about 26feet) yet has quite an interesting array of wildlife. not to mention the resident dusky whaler sharks that are my favourite part of the dive

On the other side of the beach, it gets down to about 11m (about 35 or so feet) and is a great spot for anight dive. Lots of critters, shrimp, cuttlefish and other critters.

Z...

 

[divingjd]

Every dive has its own attractions, but the ones I really remember are usually shallow reef dives. Columbia Shallows in Coz is one of them, 30 ft or less, lots of critters, nice reef. Saw my first mantis shrimp there. All the dives on Little Cayman's Bloody Bay Wall, where you finish up the dive in 15-25 ft of water, watching the sunlight playing on the bottom. Tarpon Reef in Cayman Brac, spending 15 minutes or so at 40 ft. watching yellow head jawfish, and then moving along to see the other sights. Lots of bottom time, lots of light, lots of critters, lots of relaxation - can't be beat.:14:

 

[pilot fish]

maybe something to do with an open drysuit zipper and a stinging jellyfish?

Jellyfish carry microscopes? We'll never know about that 7 minute dive till dherbamn steps up and tells us what happened.

 

[DennisS]

I like doing nearby beach dives, the depths are in the 15-20 foot range. There's the rubble reef about 100 yards from shore and the first reef a little further out. Lots of tropicals and soft coral, some 5-6 foot ledges, lobster, an occasional cruising barracuda or school of snook or tarpon, schools of baitfish, mini-critters and lobster. I dive a 130 so it gives me around 2 hours bottom time. Scootering out is fun if I feel lazy. There's picture taking, spearfishing and lobstering to keep me from being bored.

 

[TSandM]

One of my favorite dive sites so far is the Titlow Marine Preserve. I've had two dives there with a max depth of 40 odd feet, and we only got THAT deep because we missed the pilings and had to turn around. Most of the dives was spent in about twenty feet of water, going from one delightful creature to another. One dive was 71 minutes, and the other 78 -- both pushing up on my absolute limit for staying warm enough to be safe, and both times, I came out of the water with over 1000 psi. I LOVE shallow dives.

Another incredible dive is the Mala Boat Ramp on Maui -- Fabulous structure, tons of sea life of all sorts, and a max depth of about 35 feet. Colorful schools of fish in clear, brilliantly sunlit water -- who could possible complain about that?

As far as favorite dives, Ber Rabbit nailed it:

My favorite dives are the ones where my buddy and I are perfectly in tune, communicating with just glances and head nods and occasional hand signals. I can almost hear what my regular dive buddies are thinking during the dive. It's a REAL thrill to dive with someone the first time and discover that you are on the same mental wave and can almost hear each other thinking as well as you hear your regular buddy.

There is simply nothing like a dive with a buddy who is completely on the same wavelength. It's like fine ballroom dancing -- absolute joy in partnership. Doesn't matter how deep or shallow, or even what you see or don't see.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Well, I set a new shallow record for myself today.

It's killer hot here. I got a little sick working in the heat yesterday and had a little more to do this morening. Afterward we decided to go down to the river to cool off. There's a nice public access site about 4 miles from the house. "Nice" being defined as you don't get arrested for accessing the river there. I had to unload tools from the truck to pack dive gear for tomarrow anyway so we decided to take some gear with us.

We got some funny lookes and one guy asked if the river was deep enough to scuba dive in. I asked him how deep it needed to be. LOL it wasn't any worse than the looks and comments we got when gearing up in drysuits and doubles along side a Kentucky road by a creek that's only visable for a couple hundred feet...comes out of the rocks on one end and back into the rocks on the other and is about 3 ft deep between. Guess what the spot is called? Yep, Short Creek.

It is a shallow river and I've only found a couple of little holes that would be over my head and none of those were near where we were.

The water is low, though we've had enough rain lately to muddy it up some. Still we may have had as much as two feet of vis in a couple of spots.

We waded in at the boat ramp and floated down the river. There's a shoals just down stream that wasn't deep enough to float over so we slipped out of our gear and waded while floating the gear.

We dived some waist and even chest deep holes. Sometimes we rode the current through them. A few times we, swam cross current and moved diagnally through the hole. Other places, we swam upstrem behind current breaks like little islands. I didn't bring a depth guage but I don't think I ever broke 4 ft and I wouldn't be surprised if I never got deeper than three. Not only did we leave the decompression bottles at home but we didn't even do a safety stop because we couldn't find a spot deep enough. I thought about applying this new "rule of halves" but I found accurately holding stop depth at a foot and a half a bit difficult in the current. Gas management was simple since I don't really think that we needed any at all.

Well, as far as dives go, it wasn't much and we didn't hardly see a thing. My wife doesn't like vis that low unless she's in a cave. In OW she wants to be able to see. Figure that one out. But...we did cool off and that was the primary objective.

This would be a good one for the diver attrition thread. LOL

 

[MikeFerrara]

PS, I'm really starting to hate you people who have an ocean in your backyard!

 

[Matsya]

My second night dive was to a maximum depth of 4 metres. I was new to night diving and was uncertain about my depth. I kept checking my depth guage which was not registering any depth at all almost throughout the dive. It took me some time to realise that we were so shallow that the guage was not registering a reading !!
Most of my night dives are between 10-15 metres.

 

[scubafool]

PS, I'm really starting to hate you people who have an ocean in your backyard!

Envy does have a tendency to turn into hate, doesn't it?

I envy my South Florida brethren as well. But then again, I live a LOT closer to cave country than they do.

Anyway, my favorite local dive is a spring that I can be at in about half an hour. Max of 25 feet deep, a mishmash of currents to play in, even shallower areas to play in, lots of marine life, viz varies depending on who is doing what where, it is cheap, I can dive there by myself. I have done more dives there than any other particular spot, and I don't see that changing any time soon.