mobster75
Contributor
Just thought I'd post my first experience doing a night dive tonight. My local dive shop offers up weekly Wednesday night dives during the summer months, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to try out a night dive and see what its like as I realized that I really love diving and want to try as many diverse ways of diving as possible.
We made a shore entry around 8:30pm (beautiful calm sunset!) following the contour of the rocky ledge until one of us (geee.. guess who? me!) hit our turn-around pressure. Being a new diver, I knew I'd have the most issues with buoyancy and task loading, but I thought it wouldn't be too bad as I've been pretty OK during my daytime dives.
The first half of the dive, I was all over the place buoyancy-wise because I was just slightly tense with the dark conditions (pitch black unless I was aiming my flashlight or could see other tank lights and flashlights) and I had a bit of apprehension about floating around when I couldn't see the bottom. It's interesting the stuff you start thinking about while in a new situation underwater and trying to make sure you are keeping up with all needed tasks.. I kept thinking about the posts I've read on here about divers who lose it when task loading and how all any diving situation needs to get ugly is a little bit of panic instead of thinking through things.
My primary light died just as we were starting the deeper part of the dive.. I later saw it somehow flooded but I had checked that the cover was on tightly before we started the dive.. So.. hopefully a Xenon light for a UK C8 isn't too expensive... No problem.. Just went for my backup light (part of the same beginner UK SunLight kit) which worked fabulously but I had clipped it to the left side of my BC and found it awkward to use for checking my SPG and dive computer.
I also had a bit of mask leakage throughout but that was a non-issue as it didn't phase me at all, just cleared the mask as needed.
The bottom line on this for me was: I like night diving, but its a bit more of a challenge. I'm glad that I feel comfortable underwater and that mask issues no longer bug me as night diving throws its own set of issues that might seem overwhelming if a diver wasn't generally comfortable underwater w/ the scuba gear on.
I want to practice more in the future with task loading as having a slightly leaky mask, bad primary light, medium buoyancy issues, slight tension to new environment, awkward backup light mobility, SPG checking, and following my buddy and the group were taxing my abilities to their current maximums. With all this going on, I didn't spend as much time enjoying the sights as I'd have liked, but we saw some local fish, bunches of starfish and sea urchins and crabs and a couple lobsters (including a lobster pot placed from shore sans lobsters).
When we surfaced at the end, I was really surprised to see we were under 45 minutes with a max dept of 32ft as it felt a lot shorter and shallower while I was staying on top of my tasks.
We made a shore entry around 8:30pm (beautiful calm sunset!) following the contour of the rocky ledge until one of us (geee.. guess who? me!) hit our turn-around pressure. Being a new diver, I knew I'd have the most issues with buoyancy and task loading, but I thought it wouldn't be too bad as I've been pretty OK during my daytime dives.
The first half of the dive, I was all over the place buoyancy-wise because I was just slightly tense with the dark conditions (pitch black unless I was aiming my flashlight or could see other tank lights and flashlights) and I had a bit of apprehension about floating around when I couldn't see the bottom. It's interesting the stuff you start thinking about while in a new situation underwater and trying to make sure you are keeping up with all needed tasks.. I kept thinking about the posts I've read on here about divers who lose it when task loading and how all any diving situation needs to get ugly is a little bit of panic instead of thinking through things.
My primary light died just as we were starting the deeper part of the dive.. I later saw it somehow flooded but I had checked that the cover was on tightly before we started the dive.. So.. hopefully a Xenon light for a UK C8 isn't too expensive... No problem.. Just went for my backup light (part of the same beginner UK SunLight kit) which worked fabulously but I had clipped it to the left side of my BC and found it awkward to use for checking my SPG and dive computer.
I also had a bit of mask leakage throughout but that was a non-issue as it didn't phase me at all, just cleared the mask as needed.
The bottom line on this for me was: I like night diving, but its a bit more of a challenge. I'm glad that I feel comfortable underwater and that mask issues no longer bug me as night diving throws its own set of issues that might seem overwhelming if a diver wasn't generally comfortable underwater w/ the scuba gear on.
I want to practice more in the future with task loading as having a slightly leaky mask, bad primary light, medium buoyancy issues, slight tension to new environment, awkward backup light mobility, SPG checking, and following my buddy and the group were taxing my abilities to their current maximums. With all this going on, I didn't spend as much time enjoying the sights as I'd have liked, but we saw some local fish, bunches of starfish and sea urchins and crabs and a couple lobsters (including a lobster pot placed from shore sans lobsters).
When we surfaced at the end, I was really surprised to see we were under 45 minutes with a max dept of 32ft as it felt a lot shorter and shallower while I was staying on top of my tasks.
).
