How was your first night dive ?

[Redshift]

Dark, very dark
It was shortly after my cmas 1. Interesting to drop off a boat and descend into darkness. I had a really tiny torch Loved it.

 

[tennjay]

My first was a spear fishing trip in Dale Hollow Lake. It was a blast.

 

[pdhenry]

I discovered that although I'm normally nearsighted I couldn't make out the markings on my console compass underwater in the dark. I could sort of see something different on one cardinal point which I inferred to be North.

 

[Sandie7]

Do your first (even 1st several) night dives in a familiar location with no special challenges of its own. Take one or two extra lights (hardware stores sell waterproof to 90ft flashlights for camping, hiking, hunting at just $20 or so) and have one strapped to your BCD so all you have to do is turn it on to have light restored. Knowing you have these backups should allow you to relax about the light issue. Know too that divers are vastly harder to loose and easy to find when everyone is carrying lights. Once you have relaxed about being in the night water, try shielding your light now and again to see how much ambient light there really is. With luck you will get to notice a beautiful starry sky above. Enjoy! Night dives are beautiful.

My 1st night dive was at a quarry. It was really fun because the fish sit much tighter and many creatures such as crayfish and bigger fish are up and about where you can see them. Structures also look so much more mysterious and intriguing in the limited light of a flashlight beam and buddy communication is in many ways hugely easier when you can use lights.
I also thought it was humorous how fish hide behind ridiculously small objects apparently convienced I can't see them (like a fat boy behind a skinny tree) and my buddy kept picking up little "wing man" perches that liked to swim with him in perfect formation.


My first warm water night dive was an absolute explosion of color and creatures at Small Giftun in the Red Sea. A screen saver aquarium has never featured to many creatures in such a small space: many morays in different colors, a Spanish dancer, a slipper lobster, hundreds of different and all equally brilliantly-colored reef fish, spider-web fine corals (?) that only open up at night and have lacy fan-like fingers that cringe in the light, morays foraging up and down and through the reef searching for prey and scared parrot fish hiding from them. Just amazing, a sight of a lifetime.

Amazing and beautiful description, thank you !

---------- Post added May 2nd, 2015 at 10:06 PM ----------

And put Stetson on your list for night (or day) dives. Just remember to put your reg back in *before* you depart the boat. ;-)

I will put it on my list ... but it is VERY far away

---------- Post added May 2nd, 2015 at 10:15 PM ----------

My first night dive was a 30 foot drop off a suspension bridge into a river in Montana. I can't say I reccomend that - it was so dark that we couldn't see the water so we had to trust the people we were with to tell us where to jump from. It was absolutely insane - it was jumping into a pitch black void. We could see absolutely NOTHING. (...)

I can't believe you did this !!! :shocked2:

I am a fan of the high-lumen lights but if you are going to carry one I strongly recommend a wimpy light as well. Depending on the time of year, a super-bright light can attract lots of little critters in the water. It's fun to feed the coral but they can be a bit annoying - this is why I carry both a DRIS 1000 lumen light and an Intova (sp?), which isn't nearly as bright.

I have this light:
FOCO D10 XL LED 860 LUMEN C/ESTUCHE | buceo,submarinismo,luz,iluminacion,led,subacqua,foco,d10,estuche,bateria, | Casco Antiguo

And my buddy has this one:
FOCO D20 LED 1000 LUMEN C/ESTUCHE | buceo,submarinismo,luz,iluminacion,led,subacqua,foco,d20,estuche,bateria, | Casco Antiguo



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THANKS EVERYONE FOR ALL THE GREAT STORIES AND ADVICE !

 

[digdug87]

I love night diving! You get to see so many more creatures than during the day time. My first night dive was in '92. Both my wife and I were working on our AOW certification. There were 3 of us going on the dive as a buddy team. We were at Beaver lake in AR, USA, which has decent visibility for a freshwater lake. The dive went well, but, my wife and I ended up towing the other diver back to shore. My first warm water ocean night dive was, the first week of November '94, Cozumel Mex, at Paradise Reef. (This was back before Paradise was paved over for a cruise ship pier.)

There's lots of good advise from the previous posters. Pick a site you've dove before, some place that is not challenging, take a couple of lights. Relax, go with a dive professional, DM, AI, or instructor.

 

[Iralub]

First one as part of AOW was pretty scary, I got disoriented on entry and turned upside down. My instructor didn't notice, but another instructor diving with the group did and helped me out and then guided me for the rest of the dive. There were turtles and cool fish and gorgeous corals. I've since done about half a dozen night dives and they have all been very nice and relaxing. I'd give it a go. At least twice because the first experience may not be indicative.

 

[Skittl1321]

My first (and only) night dive was awesome. It was in Cozumel and I was amazed at how clear the water was and how much I could see. We didn't have much moon, but of course, everyone had lights.

See- I trained in the midwest with about 5 feet of visibility (day time dives). So I imagined all night dives to be like that- you could see just a few feet until your light gave out. But instead, the light lit up probably 30+ feet, and you could see other people's lights in the distant. Seeing my buddy was never a problem and unlike in the midwest where I feel like I need to be practically on his arm, I could be an arms length away and not even care.

Plus the animal life was brillant. We went to a crowded site, so I was also somewhat amused by what looked like alien lights in the distance- other divers shining their flashlights around.

So night time in clear water is WAY better than daytime in murky water.

No way am I night diving in the midwest. Quite honestly, I don't even enjoy doing it during the day. It is more of a necessary evil for me.

 

[archer1960]

My first night dive during my AOW quals turned into a long navigation dive; it was a good thing the UW navigation dive came first! My buddy and I were both newly-certified OW divers in Cozumel with a group. It was a shore dive, and we did our night navigation drills with no trouble, but then the instructor told us to just swim around a bit and look at things on the bottom, and we got caught up in the current without realizing it. When I got down to 1500 psi, I decided it was time to go up and take a look around, and discovered that we had been pushed a loooooong way down the coast, to the point where we had to look hard to pick out the resorts's dock lights. So we took a compass bearing and started finning back on the surface after moving closer to shore to get out of the current. It was a bit nervous-making, but we knew that if worse came to to worst, we could just swim straight to shore on our snorkels and then walk back to the resort, so we weren't seriously worried. We did (appropriately) get razzed a bit by the rest of the group when we got back.

A couple of days later, some very experienced (multiple 100s of dives) divers in our group also did a night dive from the shore, and had the exact same thing happen to them. One of them actually apologized to us for the razzing he had given us, after he discovered how easy it was for that to happen.

 

[CT-Rich]

I didn't get around to doing night dives until late, mostly because finding buddies for it an getting around to purchasing light etc. seemed like a lot of bother. The first one was an absolute revelation. Lobsters, eels and squid roaming about in the open and critters you never see during the day, like sand worms swimming in open water. Here was my first effort at video on a night dive from last fall.

[video=vimeo;108963008]https://vimeo.com/108963008[/video]

The dive site here is a RI state park and the there are houses or parking lot lights, just you and a star filled sky. Non diving friends always comment on how spooky it looks, but to me the dark and aloness of it is awesome. Sometimes it feels like you are going into the closet to seek out all your childhood monsters and vanquish them. I bought a proper video light for this season, can't wait to see how it comes out. I only wish I could capture the night stars and luminescence the camera can't pickup.

 

[Sandie7]

I didn't get around to doing night dives until late, mostly because finding buddies for it an getting around to purchasing light etc. seemed like a lot of bother. The first one was an absolute revelation. Lobsters, eels and squid roaming about in the open and critters you never see during the day, like sand worms swimming in open water. Here was my first effort at video on a night dive from last fall.

[video=vimeo;108963008]https://vimeo.com/108963008[/video]

The dive site here is a RI state park and the there are houses or parking lot lights, just you and a star filled sky. Non diving friends always comment on how spooky it looks, but to me the dark and aloness of it is awesome. Sometimes it feels like you are going into the closet to seek out all your childhood monsters and vanquish them. I bought a proper video light for this season, can't wait to see how it comes out. I only wish I could capture the night stars and luminescence the camera can't pickup.

Amazing, thanks a lot !