Advantages of night diving?

[jstamets]

I enjoy night diving, but don't get to do it very often. Like all diving, risks are mitigated by training and experience - get trained and know your limits. Certainly a person with no training and little diving experience would be in a position of higher risk, but primarily due to task loading and ignorance of risks. If a person is comfortable and possesses adequate skills, a night training class will prepare you to safely dive at night.
One nice thing is that an old dive location that is getting somewhat humdrum seems like a brand new location.

 

[EladLending]

Night diving is a blast! One can see nocturnal animals that wouldn't be seen during the daytime. One of my my favorite diving memories is catching a "Spanish Dancer" in my flashlight for several long minutes! But there are differences in diving technique. This is what I was taught about night diving, and what I practice:
1. I don't go deeper than ten meters.
2. If diving from a boat, I don't stray far. If from shore, I make sure there are lights on shore.
3. I don't stand, sit or kneel on the bottom.
4. I just find a good spot near a reef and watch the sea life swim by, rather that go on a long "trek" underwater.
5. If there's a strong current or if anything doesn't feel right, I abort the dive.

Safe diving,
Elad

 

[koen4162]

Do not put your feet into the trap of doing night dives with more than 3 divers together. Just you and your buddy is even better. One may only check whether one diving lamp on the left and/or on the right is still there. And when one light fails keep physical contact with this diver and end the dive unless you have a spare light.

But the special atmosphere at night is worth it.

 

[drbill]

Just returned from 10 days filming sharks (and anything else that got in front of my camera) in the Bahamas. I was on a liveaboard and we did a late afternoon dive at "Smuggler's Plane" (a DC-3 assumed to have been used in the cocaine trade). It was an OK day dive, but I'm not big on trash on the ocean floor. I wondered if the night dive was worth doing, but I had no desire to sit on deck and miss it. The night dive turned out to be fantastic at the same site... one (or possibly two) loggerhead turtles sleeping under the engine cowling, plenty of critters to film. I truly enjoy night diving here in SoCal (at least during the warmer months when the alien Sargassum isn't covering the bottom and you can actually see some of the critters). It's a different world under moonlight.

 

[jkelly1]

I think that the diving in night is too dangerous but actually light is much important to see around if u have good lights you can see from top to bottom and judge easily the wild animal around you ....

 

[rrocklin]

Hi,
I'm new to SCUBA and I was wondering why night diving seems to be such a wildly popular thing to do. It seems a bit more dangerous without all the daytime illumination for both navigational and sensorial awareness. Is there a benefit from seeing the sorts of animal life down there?

Watch out for the sea wasps in the Cayman islands at night. We saw them every night dive we took when visiting in the summers.

 

[Hang Loose]

As a guy who has done mostly night dives in the last 7 years--because I have to watch the kids during the day while my wife is at her conferences--I have to say that night dives have been the most fun and memorable experiences compared to the day dives in that period. My advice to newbies is to wait on the night diving until you are totally comfortable diving in the daytime. And I mean totally comfortable! Lack of visibility at night combined with some sort of unexpected problem underwater can cause panic. With regards to what do you see...it depends on where you are diving. In the Hawaiian Islands, there is a huge variety of eels and they come out to hunt at night. Seeing a free-swimming eel hunting at night is really cool. Most of the invertebrates come out at night since they will be eaten in the daytime (crustaceans such as shrimp, crabs, lobsters; brittle stars and other sea stars; gastropods like giant tritons; most cephalopods (octopus, squid); many types of sharks). It is a whole different world to dive the same place during the day versus the night.

 

[PhilaDallas]

Not sure if this is the right place for this question. How new is too new for the night diving? I will be getting a referral to finish PADI OW in Cozumel, wondered if it would be a bad idea to night dive after only a few OW dives.

 

[fjpatrum]

Not sure if this is the right place for this question. How new is too new for the night diving? I will be getting a referral to finish PADI OW in Cozumel, wondered if it would be a bad idea to night dive after only a few OW dives.

I did it on my 2nd and 3rd dive out of OW. I have about 30 dives now and some 10 of them are night dives. Several from boats several in surf and a couple with easy walk ins sans surf.

There is no "too new". There is only comfortable and uncomfortable for night dives. If you don't feel up to it, skip it. You'll be able to do it another time.

 

[KeithG]

Not sure if this is the right place for this question. How new is too new for the night diving? I will be getting a referral to finish PADI OW in Cozumel, wondered if it would be a bad idea to night dive after only a few OW dives.

Boyancy control and navigation are generally much harder at night due to the lack of visual clues. If you have these under control then go ahead. It would be best to pick an easy site that you already know.

The standard practice on all of the live aboards I have been on is that the night dive is a repeat of a site already done during the day.