UV Night Dive??

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I'm a Dork Fish

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I've seen a few posts about UV night dives but have yet to see any details. Are they offered through dive shops? Is it something that you do on your own. It looks like a VERY cool dive. Any info you guys have is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Andrea
 
Andrea

We did the UV dive with Willem from Blue Divers Dive like a VIP We were booked with Bas, but his new daughter needed him for a buddy!

As far as I know they are the only shop offering it. Email them through the website if you are interested in booking the dive. We booked it that way and they replied very quickly.

It is hard to write a review that does it justice, but it reminded me of one of those high school parties in a friend's basement that was rigged with several black lights.

We met Willem at the Cliff dive site. He attached plastic filters to our dive masks and gave us special UV dive lights that we used in place of our regular lights. He led the dive and we followed along at our own pace. You see things that you would never see using a regular light. When hit with the UV light brain coral appeared to be glowing from the inside. Fireworms glowed and appeared everywhere.

I am not a big fan of night dives. as when I am diving on Bonaire I like to see colour, but I really enjoyed the experience. My GF loves night dives and thought that the UV dive was one of the best of the week.

Give it a try.
 
Any idea what the filters were for? I have converted a small dive light to UV and use it on occasion. There is not a huge amount of stuff that fluoresces but what does makes an interesting sight.
 
i've seen a few diy conversions with a uv light in an empty waterproof flashlight caseing. Is that enough light for a UV dive?
 
Any idea what the filters were for? I have converted a small dive light to UV and use it on occasion. There is not a huge amount of stuff that fluoresces but what does makes an interesting sight.

where did you pick up the UV bulb? I am thinking I take one along with to play around with.
 
Any idea what the filters were for? I have converted a small dive light to UV and use it on occasion. There is not a huge amount of stuff that fluoresces but what does makes an interesting sight.


Herman, I have to admit that I did not really listen to the explanation of why the filter was needed (Hey I was on vacation.) but as I recall it had to do with filtering out part of the light from the UV light which also throws out blue light. I was more interested in what it did as opposed to why.

If anyone else has done the dive and can explain it better, please jump in.
 
where did you pick up the UV bulb? I am thinking I take one along with to play around with.

AFAIK there are no simple drop-in replacements. I built a completely custom light using a UV LED. Incandescent lights don't make very good UV lights. I've only seen fluorescent lights and LEDs with enough power to be useful.

The filters are to block the visible output of the UV light so that all you see is the natural fluorescence of the reef. They're typically, probably always, yellow.
 
AFAIK there are no simple drop-in replacements. I built a completely custom light using a UV LED. Incandescent lights don't make very good UV lights. I've only seen fluorescent lights and LEDs with enough power to be useful.

The filters are to block the visible output of the UV light so that all you see is the natural fluorescence of the reef. They're typically, probably always, yellow.

Yes they were yellow. Nothing fancy - just a piece of plastic with a strap.
 
Oddly, I spent a couple hours looking up UV light options. (Been toying with the idea of a DIY can light and a UV light head.) I found the company that probably made the system you used with the blue/near UV lights and the yellow filters.

BlueStar Light

But I think I'll stick to the idea of a 10w true UV LED setup. Naimis made pretty much the exact design I was drawing up, it looks pretty amazing.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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