How was your first night dive ?

[FinnMom]

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.

 

[Searcaigh]

spider-web fine corals (?) that only open up at night and have lacy fan-like fingers that cringe in the light.

Sounds like basket stars .... they are actually a type of brittlestar

 

[gypsyjim]

They look like underwater radar stations at night.

During daylight they appear like some cancerous growth, all knotted up in a tight lump.

 

[clownfishsydney]

If you are scared of the dark, perhaps it might be best to start the dive when there is still some light and then as it darkens, it will not be like going straight into a pitch black sea.

I have organised a night dive for our dive club every Thursday (weather permitting) for over 10 years. I have now done 449 night dives, love them. We get an average of 10 members along each week.

 

[gypsyjim]

One variation I sometimes like to do on a moonlit night, is do the dive without turning on my light. My daughter and I often have dived that way on Bonaire's reef, when not diving with a group of divers.
Once your eyes adapt to the natural light it is amazing how you become less intimidating to the critters, without that light cannon shining in their eyes.

 

[RJP]

My first night dive was Kapalua Bay on Maui. So dark - and so clear - that when we turned our lights off and looked up from our safety stop we could actually see the stars!

 

[gbf]

I really enjoy night dives.

HOWEVER...

The problem is they occur after I've been sitting on the terrace watching for the elusive (beer) green (beer) flash (beer). And then, night dives interfere with dinner.

But sometimes you have to suck it up, skip the green (beer) flash, go, then have a late dinner (pizza at Capt. Dons).

 

[AdivingBel]

I personally have never really cared for night dives. (There! I wrote it!)

LOL...hey I get it. You and my wife are of the same mind. I've been on a few that would have been better avoided. Went on one last summer (Little Cayman). Too many divers in the group. There wasn't enough interest for two boats, so they loaded us all up on one. Way too many "light cannons" and the blood worms were so thick it was like swimming in soup. Saw interesting critters. The divers were above average, so nobody got kicked in the head, but you had to really want to be there. About halfway through, the green (beer) flash was looking pretty good.

 

[drbill]

It's been way too long since I did my first night dive and must admit I don't remember it. Over the past 5-6 years most of my summer and fall dives have been at night in part to avoid the crowds at our dive park during the day and in part because the "night life" is so much different than what I see during the day. Some fish sleep at night, others come out at night or change their behavior and I also see more inveretbrates out roaming the reef at night. As a marine biologist, I need to spend time diving at night to gain a better understanding of our kelp forest dynamics and critters.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

In a word, awesome. We had taken tome be sure we had three good lights apiece, did a thorough briefing about the dive route, which was an easy slow swim around a large coral outcropping at about 50 feet.It was from a boat, with a strobe we never lost sight of. Planning and equipment is everything. Since then I have done scores of night dives from boat and shore. Shore entry has its own unique planning, including setting up a patter of point of exit lights. Night dives are great fun, if you are properly equipped, briefed and prepared.
DivemasterDennis