Night diving.
By Rusty Miller
Night diving is a totally different type of diving experience: you have heard the old expression “strange things come out at night.” In the ocean environment it is a true enough statement. In this environment there are animals and invertebrates that you will only see after the sun goes down, and, yes, sharks do come out at night too. I can say with all my years of diving with students that I have seen, on a rare occasion, a shark or two. It was very thrilling to be able to see them swimming around the area we were diving. Let me state that as a general rule sharks don’t like the loud noises of the bubbles we make so they generally keep away from us. Now all bets are off when you are spearfishing but that’s for another column.
To me, the best part of the night dive is the descent to the wreck that we are exploring. Remember the first scene of the movie “Titanic” when they are descending in the deep dark water and then the ghost silhouette of the bow of the ship comes into view? That’s kind of the way it happens when you go on your night dive and you are descending down the anchor line to the top of the wreck. The silhouette of the ship comes out and it’s a tremendous sense of awe and for a moment you feel like you’re the first one to set eyes on it. Your heart is beating very rapidly and you can hear every beat, you start to feel a little anxious and then you are at the bottom of the anchor rope. Now you have to make a conscious decision to leave your anchor of safety and start swimming around with you, your buddy and flashlights.
At this point now you’re focused on “don’t forget where we left the anchor rope” then you start to venture off into the darkness only revealing itself just beyond the beam of your flashlights. At this point I would recommend you check your pressure gauge to make sure you have enough gas in your scuba cylinder because through the nervous breathing you want to gauge how far around the wreck you can go before you head back to the anchor point. So I suggest that before you start exploring that you stop and get your breathing under control.
You are ready to begin your exploration of the wreck. You give your buddy the OK and go. Remember NOT to penetrate any of the holes that seem big enough for you and your gear to get through – you are not trained for wreck penetration. You can, however, use your flashlight to see a small distance inside the wreck. I have seen on almost every night dive on the wrecks under gunnels, or small holes in the side of the wreck several species of sea anemone. There are all kinds of fish species that you will only see at night and did I mention invertebrates, a lot of those sharp things that look dead and like little bowls you see during the day come out at night and if you are very slow in your movement you will see what looks like little flowers that are catching the small plankton in the water for food.
At this point in time you need to check your air pressure so that when it gets to 1200psi you start making your way back to the anchor rope to make your ascent and commit what you saw to your memory and write it in your log book when you get back on the boat.
This is a repeat of a column that first appeared in April 2022.
Russell Miller #59999
