Night Dive

[Chilidog11]

Hi All,

Leaving Saturday for Cozumel and have a night dive scheduled for Wednesday. This is my second diving trip so I am a little nervous to do the night dive.

Can someone tell me what to expect? I hate to be a big chicken.

Thanks
Chili

 

[Qnape]

It may vary a lot based on the dive op you are using, but many night dives are done on Paradise reef - relatively shallow with generally moderate currents and modest structure. Mostly they will begin at twilight instead of at full dark, to give your eyes a chance to acclimate to the light. You will often see large crab, various species of lobster, and hopefully octopus out on the floor of the reef. Keep your eyes open for sleeping parrotfish, but don't disturb them if they have already settled into their mucos cocoon. Stay close to your guide, and it is always wise to have a spare torch.

 

[robint]

MY BEST night dives ever in Cozumel. Do it, do it, do it.

It seems dark but your eyes adjust pretty quickly. It is fun, everywhere you look there will be something cool happening. All types of shellfish (shrimp, crab, lobster, etc) out walking around and eating. Eels and octopus out hunting. Reef fish are sleeping in or next to coral. Parrotfish make a mucus cocoon and change color to disguise themselves.... very cool to see.



As I said.... Do it.

robin

 

[FuzzyNutz]

Expect to see all the corals open up and all the creatures that were hiding in the day! Expect to see turtles, eels, octopus, and maybe even some sharks use your light to help find food. Expect to experience bioluminescence and what it feels like to dive under moonlight. Night diving is awesome, I actually prefer it to daytime diving! It's cool!

Really though, not much different than a regular dive. You'll use lights for hand signals instead - I'm sure you'll be briefed on those. Stay extra close to your group incase of light failure. Everything is really pretty much the same. If you get to see that location in the daylight, you'll be amazed at how much it transforms at night!

 

[Mike]

Hi All,

Leaving Saturday for Cozumel and have a night dive scheduled for Wednesday. This is my second diving trip so I am a little nervous to do the night dive.

Can someone tell me what to expect? I hate to be a big chicken.

Thanks
Chili

Expect some disorientation, much depends on your skill level and comfortableness in the water. Many night dives start off at dusk and it won't be truly dark when you start, but the ending will be dark getting back on the boat. The phase of the moon and cloud cover are elements that effect night dives, the fuller the moon combined with the clearer the night can equal barely needing a light as your eyes adjust, but little moon or cloudy and it's going to be pitch black and all you will see beyond the limits of the beam of your light is other lights flashing and dancing around you. The more dialed in your diving is the easier the night dive will be as the darkness adds another element to deal with. I don't recommend doing one unless you're comfortable with your diving.

Keeping track of your buddy and dive master can be more difficult in the dark, many times the dive master will use two lights at the same time so it's simple to keep track of him, but good buddy skills are important. Good courtesy skills are too, newbies on night dives tend to point their lights in other divers faces, try to avoid this. Proper safety protocol equals one main light and a back up. One light on a night dive is not proper, you don't need two major lights, just a good main and a cheaper smaller secondary. Many divers carry the cheaper secondary light on all dives as even in day light you'll be surprised what you can see in the nooks and crannies with a cheap little light. Keeping track of your buddy might be easier if you guys hang glow sticks off your tanks or the little battery operated lights they make for tanks. Plan ahead for after the dive, think about bringing some towels with you as many people get chilled back on the boat on a night dive.

If this is your first night dive, I'd recommend leaving the camera in the room for the first one, you'll have enough to concentrate on without the additional task loading of a camera or video. If you're not that experienced I'd heavily recommend only doing a night dive if it's a shallow one like Paradise, if you happen to be offered a night dive elsewhere that has no bottom under you, consider skipping it. It's quite a different experience being pitch black with no bottom you really have to have buoyancy dialed in and watch your gauges and be aware of your other senses since your eyes will no longer help you much at controlling your depth, your ears can help you sense pressure changes but in the dark you loose most of your ability of eyes to keep you from sinking deeper without realizing it.

Enjoy it, the 2nd shift of reef animals come out at night, you'll have the opportunity to see many creatures you would have a very difficult time ever seeing during the day.

 

[islanddream]

I second what Mike said about having a tank light. My husband and I bought them before our trip to Saba in March and it was so much easier to distinguish him (and him, me) from the other divers. One time when we were night diving in Cozumel, I became confused as to who was who and which group was ours. We had about eight divers on our boat and then another boat dropped their divers close to us. Geez, there were about 15-20 divers swimming around and I couldn't figure out where our group began and ended. Luckily, two of the divers in our group had the tank lights so by seeing them, I knew we were with our own group. When we got back home we ordered the battery powered tank lights and we won't leave home without them because we LOVE night dives! 21 more days until we're back in Coz...can't wait!

 

[mstevens]

Expect to love it. Some of my lowest SAC rates are on Cozumel night dives. My son prefers to do them with his light off the entire time if there's a full moon - he's a complete night dive addict.

I hate, hate, hate tank lights. They're distracting. Besides, I've watched two large groups collide (with us in the middle, just waiting for them all to sort themselves out) when everyone had a tank marker light. If everyone has one, it won't help with keeping track of your buddy in such a situation. There are typically 3 of us and a DM, so it's not hard to keep track of everyone.

 

[Sue Sue]

What to expect ?? Imagine taking a walk in the woods, at night, with a flashlight. Instead of spotting owls and raccoons, you instead will see sleeping fish, octopus, crab/lobster or perhaps morays on the hunt. And speaking of Flashlights.... If you purchase a light, do consider one that is not too bright. Bright lights only scare off the critters. For instance, My secondary light is an Intova compact which has two light level settings. If needed, I use the low light setting during a dive and the high light setting for use upon surfacing to signal my location. My primary light , and the one I use for the most part, is actually a tiny 2 AAA battery penlight size light. The light is VERY dim and yellow in color. With this light I can watch critters and not scare them off. My DH has an Intova Compact for his Primary, however he hardly uses it. He , for the most part, actually only lights his way with the red lights from his camera strobes. The critters are not startled at all which in turn allows wonderful opportunities to observe them. Another tip is to not quickly wave your lights around or on top of critters...they don't like it ....and the light movement scares them and doing so is frankly a nuisance. Just take things slow, approach the critters slowly. enjoy the tranquility and hopefully you will be planning the next night dive before you surface from your first one. Please do let us know how it all turned out for you. Best Wishes !

Double S

 

[Skittl1321]

I see you are from Illinois- have you done any MidWest diving? If you have, you're going to be fine.

I'm a giant wuss, and was very nervous about a night dive, just on Paradise (to the point I told the DM I wouldn't be offended if she thought maybe I wasn't ready.) Turns out, it was one of my most relaxed dives. The visibility was still super clear where ever you shone your light (I don't think we had much of a moon)- it wasn't like home where you stopped being able to see after 5 feet and it was just dark. It was just instead of being able to see everything, you only saw what you were looking at. And there were lots of beautiful things to see at night.

My two tips- don't shine your light AT people, and stay close to YOUR DM. We picked up a stray half-way through our dive.

Our group put glo-bracelets on our tanks. Each buddy pair had a different color, which helped ID who people were. I stayed next to my buddy, but if for some reason I got away from him, knowing he had blue would have helped me find him within our group; and knowing we were a multi-colored group may have helped me find our group if I lost it. (But at a few points it was a bit congested down there, so our DM actually had us stop and wait for the other group to pass by; she was pro-active about noticing the groups were converging and hustled us together. It was the only dive that happened on, Paradise is quite popular at night.)

The only thing is I think I'd want to do daytime dives with the same DM before I did a night dive. I'd like to know what there particular style is, so I know what to expect.

 

[Chilidog11]

Thanks everyone for your great tips. We did go and get the glow sticks for the tanks already and i've packed a light jacket for the return trip. Good pointers on where to point my flashlight. I wouldn't have thought of those things. I used to be a firefighter, so the dark won't bother me but I think fire has nothing on water.

Skittl1321,
I did my OW dives at Hauge (sp?) quarry and yes the visibility was horrible. Other than that, no Midwest diving. I've become a suba snob after diving Coz last year. No cold water for me.

Thanks again and I'll let you all know how it was when I get back

Chili