I have always dived in excellent visibility and never really understood why anyone would even consider diving under poor visibility conditions. What is the fascination of going scuba diving where you see nothing, are constantly making an effort to find your bearings, keep losing your buddy, and see nothing but your depth and air pressure gauges throughout the entire dive? Well I didn’t really understand it until I tried my first low visibility dive several years ago, and really enjoyed the experience despite not seeing a single fish throughout! This got me thinking as to why did I enjoy that dive so much?
Here is the second part of my article titled “10 Reasons Why Low Visibility Diving Can Be a Good Thing- Part 1“, if you haven’t read the first part you can do so by clicking here.
5. The ultimate test of a good dive buddy
A low visibility dive is the best way to evaluate the competence and your compatibility with your dive buddy, or for that matter you as a good dive buddy as well. The need to keep within contact range and being able to constantly communicate despite the poor visibility will either make or break your reputation as a dive partner. I have had several dive buddies disappear on me, by either swimming too far ahead while leading, or by not paying attention while following. This has often resulted in having to search around and finally call off the dive meeting up at the surface just to locate the missing diver. The skill of being able to swim within arm’s length and maintain visual contact is crucial. The very real possibility of losing your buddy while on the dive generates the need to create prearranged plans for search and meet up at the surface strategy.
6. Makes you appreciate of the little things
As I mentioned earlier, the lowering of visibility makes you more appreciative of the little things that you do spot on the dive. I remember that first dive where I didn’t spot any fish, but was thrilled nevertheless just to experience the thermal currents and the sudden clarity offered while diving through cold water thermal. On another low visibility dive, I had my mask inches away from the sea bed enraptured by the tiny militia of shrimp feeding there. Whereas on a reef dive with up to 100 feet of visibility I may have whizzed past hundreds of fish and coral frustrated at the end of the dive for not being able to remember any one memorable thing to record in my log book!
7. Tests your Navigation Skills
Low visibility diving makes use of all your compass navigation skills. As there are no features, visual navigation is impossible; navigation by compass is the only way you can find your bearings. For someone like me who dives by underwater visual features alone, this makes navigating more challenging and fun. Especially if you have descended using an anchor line, just being able to return to the anchor for the ascent is a challenge in itself.
8. Pushes for good underwater Communication
Underwater communication becomes challenging when you cannot see your buddy’s hand signals, and so the use of your flashlight or tapping your tank to create sound signals adds another element of novelty to low visibility diving.
9. Requires Special Gear & Preparations
Low visibility diving like night diving requires some amount of special gear, such as reflector tape on your BCD, powerful dive flashlights, chemical glow sticks to light up the anchor line, possibly a buddy line, glow-in-the-dark compasses and gauge dials and perhaps a navigation tow line reel to find your way back. For us scuba gear freaks, this means a lot new shiny toys to add to our dive gear.
10. Thrill of Danger
Although not entirely dangerous, diving in low visibility is somehow thrilling. Just as deep diving fascinates divers, low visibility diving has an element of challenge or danger to it that makes it more compelling. You could lose your buddy, lose your bearings and get lost, or simply get disoriented, all of which challenge the more experienced divers to put their skills to the test.
photos by:Saspotato, mrtwism, star5112 and Chris Hadden
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