mdv50524
Registered
My first night dive was an adventure to say the least. I was very nervous before the dive as I had never done a night dive before. To help ease my nerves I buddied up with one of the dive masters that dives with our group, she was going to stay with me and my friend who had also never done a night dive. Somehow by the time we got in the water we ended up mixed in with a group of about 8 divers (all with their own buddy pairs), had I been smart and listened to my gut instinct I would have called it right then, but I didnt. The start of the dive was great, visibility was awesome and the sight of dive lights illuminating the kelp forest was surreal. Unfortunately it all went south from there, it started with another divers light flooding, which caused them to panic and bolt for the surface. The dive master I was with told me and my friend to park it on the sandy bottom while she went to help. A few minutes later she came back and thumbed the dive. When we got on the surface the panicked diver was starting to calm down and she and her buddy decided to surface swim it back to shore. The rest of us after checking our remaining gas, and that all our lights were functional decided that we would drop back down and follow the reef back to shore. What should have been an easy swim back turned into an all-out scramble as the other buddie pairs took off in different directions. My friend, and our dive master all stuck together as originally planned, and on our way back in we found one of the other divers had gotten separated from their buddy and was tangled up in kelp and struggling to free himself. We stopped and helped free the diver and the four of us made it back safely to shore.
The next evening I did my second night dive, just me and the dive master and it was an amazing experience. Still took a while to get used to just how disorienting diving at night can be. I may do more night dives in the future, but have not be actively looking for the opportunity.
The next evening I did my second night dive, just me and the dive master and it was an amazing experience. Still took a while to get used to just how disorienting diving at night can be. I may do more night dives in the future, but have not be actively looking for the opportunity.