Fish sensitive to LEDs?

[jd950]

I had a discussion with another diver the other day. He's an instructor who leads dive groups on pretty much a daily basis, including night dives. We were talking about night dives and lights and he expressed the opinion that LED lights seem to frighten or scare off sea life more than other lights.

I do know that my led lights don't seem to attract worms like my non-led lights do. Wondering if anyone else has any thoughts on this? Are fish sensitive to light temperature?

On a related note, some of my led lights are also much brighter than my older lights and lately I just don't seem to see the same quantity of critters out at night. I have increasingly begun to wonder if it could be due to the bright lights I have been carrying. I am planning on trying a dimmer light on my next night dives and see if it makes a difference.

 

[DeprecatedMustang]

Sea critters are generally attuned to blue-green light rather than red-yellow light. So if you used a halogen you'd be less visible than with an HID. It goes both ways though.. Red-yellow light gets absorbed faster versus a more blue light.

And sure, if you turn your lights off, more stuff will come out.. but then you won't be able to see so well. I suppose you could experiment with very yellow-red lights and be more "invisible" to those species. The deeper you go, the more this will probably be relevant. Of course they'll still hear you.

There are some stomiids that bioluminesce red which they use to hunt. Think Predator where they can see prey.. prey can't see the light. I don't expect there's a radical difference in shallow water - where most night dives occur.