I've noticed this as well, and I really don't like it. They'll just be randomly shooting of gas, and it decreases my enjoyment of the game in the safe shallows. It's just too much of a hassle to do anything there sometimes.
I must agree that the day/night cycle moves really quickly. I'll go into my lifepod/base for a minute or so, pop out, and it will be a completely different time of day. This really makes exploration and resource gathering a pain in the neck just bec…
There are some caves, like the mountain island and mushroom/lava/koosh zone one that are just confusing enough that I like to have some way of reliably navigating through them, so I do use the dive reel then.