If you are an open-water diver, you have probably heard people talking about night diving. And wondered why anyone would dive at night. Truth be told, night diving can open up a whole other world to your diving. Night diving has some unique challenges, but if you take the proper precautions and the right pieces of equipment, I think everyone should experience night diving at least once. I am sure after the one dive, most of you will have your mind open to all the new possibilities.
Why night dive?
Just the thought of night diving can get your mind racing with curiosity, I hope. It would also be very normal for it to conjure up some fear. After all, humans are visual and doing most things at night on land is hard to see, so how can night diving be done safely? Other than the challenges and adventures, night diving can present many, so hopefully, by the end of this article, you will have plenty of reasons to try night diving, and provided you are a certified diver, you will have an idea of what equipment is needed and what procedures to follow to have a safe and fun dive.
Night diving can present a great opportunity if you have a local dive site where you often dive with your buddy or your dive team, and you are curious about what it looks like at night. Does any different wildlife visit the site at night?
If you’re diving a shipwreck, what does it look like at night? Will it have an increased creep or hunted factor? Often at night, any colors will be accentuated because of the use of lights during the dive and less ambient lighting coming from the surface, making colours more vibrant and creating a great opportunity for underwater photography.
Finally, becoming comfortable with night diving by developing the skills required gives you more opportunity to dive, and after all, if you love diving as much as I do, you will look for every reason to dive more often.
Do I need new training to dive at night?
Once you are Open Water certified, you have all the skills required to protect your life and dive safely within the Open water limits. As with all diving, it’s vital to know your limit and dive within it. As with anything new in diving, it’s always very important to be conservative when planning any dive in a new environment or introducing new pieces of equipment.
Because wanting to experience a night dive is a normal progression for a diver, a night dive is usually a required dive when one takes the Advanced Open Water course (AOW). I would highly recommend taking the AOW, as it will expose you to so much more than just Night diving.
If you want to know more about the AOW course, click here.
You may be able to experience night diving safely if you follow your open water training, scuba diving at a very family site with more conservative conditions and depths than you usually dive during a day dive. As night diving will be new and may add some new task loads to your dive.
What Equipment do I need?
Dive light, Backup light, Marker light,
Night diving doesn’t require too many pieces of new equipment. To night dive safely, one will need everything you need for your open water dive, along with two underwater /scuba lights. Your primary light will generally be the strongest one you can afford, or renting is a good option if you are just trying night diving. You want the light to have at least three times the burn time of your planned dive, and it should have a lanyard to attach to your wrist while diving. Secondly, one should but not necessary to have a backup light. The backup light doesn’t have to be as robust as your primary because if you flood your primary or lose it, you can continue your dive using your backup. If you don’t have a backup light for yourself and your primary light fails for whatever reason, then you have to end the dive and use your buddy’s light to get you to your boat or shore. It is good practice to have a tank marker light, this is a small light or sometimes a glow stick that you attach to your tank. This allows other divers to see you if you get slightly separated, and your dive light is pointing in a direction that doesn’t enable your dive buddies to see you.
Surface support
Finally, if you are shore diving at night, it is ideal to have surface or shore support. Having someone at the shore with a bright light signalling will enable anyone diving to know where the shore is. In the dark, if you’re in a somewhat remote environment without a compass heading it could be easy to get turned around. So having someone on shore with a light pointing out into the water adds a level of safety, and having an extra person there can be helpful in case of an emergency.
Pro tip: the AOW night diver specialty will give you general information on how to maintain your dive light and how to handle a flooded light along with dive light maintenance.
Planning a night dive
Conservatism
There are a few things that one should keep in mind when planning for a night dive. Because night diving isn’t as common as diving during the day, it’s essential to apply a little extra conservatism. Especially if you are new to night diving. Do not do a night dive if you have never dove this sight before and you don’t have a divemaster or instructor with you or if at the least be with someone who is very familiar with the site. Only dive in ideal conditions if there are even slightly more waves or chop then on a day dive don’t night dive. Remember, there is no dive worth risking not coming back from, so only night dive in the most ideal conditions that you are comfortable with.
Losing a Buddy
If you’re diving somewhere unfamiliar, make sure you find out if there are any wildlife concerns with diving at night. When I dove in the Bahamas on our night dive, we had something called sea wasps they were in the first 5-10 ft of the water and were attracted to lights, so we were instructed to do a negatively buoyant entry and only turn on your lights once blow 10 feet, and when you surface to use our regulators and blow bubbles to make a clear area blowing away any potential stinging wasp and to turn off our lights and use the boat light to find our way to the boat. Knowing what to expect helps you plan and be prepared.
When night diving, make sure you go over a lost buddy procedure with your dive buddy. Typically, when one loses your dive buddy, you wait a minute, then make a safe ascent and exit the water. This may or may not be the case in your night dive but it is particularly important that each person knows what to do and what to expect their buddy to do in a lost diver night dive. One reason is that if you are doing a night shore dive, having surface support waving a light helps know where the shore is.
Communication and safety
Night diving often involves darkness that most aren’t familiar with, probably wondering how to communicate underwater. One can use dive lights to communicate. If someone makes a large visible circular motion with your dive light, that is the symbol for “Okay.”If one shakes their light side to side or in any quick, jerky motions, that is the symbol for “attention” or “need help.” Also, if one needs to communicate the amount of air they have or any other particular hand symbols, this can be done by making the simple with your hand and shining your light on your hand.
Night diving evolves more task loading as there is limited viability, your hands are occupied holding a light, and you are focused so as not to lose your dive group. Your ascending and descending are particularly busy times of your dive. Because of that, I recommend having your dive light lanyard attached to your wrist. That way, you can let go of your light if you need to hang onto a line while you inflate or deflate your BDC. Give this a little thought before your dive so that you will be prepared if you have to juggle between your light, hanging on to an ascent/decanted line, and inflating and deflating your BCD while trying not to blind your other dive buddies with your dive light.
Incredible experience”s had at night
Now that we have gone over the essential equipment you will need for a night dive and what planning and precautions to take let me try to share a couple of experiences I have had at a night dive that I don’t think I would have experienced during the day.
Many animals come out to feed at night, and that’s why if you have the opportunity to dive into a coral reef at night, I would recommend you take it. It is very common to see lots of different wildlife at night than you see during the day.
One example of this was on a night dive in the Bahamas, where I was lucky enough to catch a morae eel hunting in between the rocks. Also, be carefully shining your light directly at anything because, in the Bahamas, we had triggerfish follow us at night. The second you stunned any fish with your light, and it froze for half a second, bang, a bigger fish would take out the little stunned fish it was fun the first couple of times, then I felt like it just wasn’t fair to the prey fish. Also, if you’re in an area with Parrotfish, you will find them sleeping in a protective jelly sack they make for themselves each night. Please be mindful not to shine your light directly at a parrot fish when sleeping, as if they get spooked, they will leave their sleep sack and just not sleep for that night. They won’t make another one, and this could be taxing to them.
If you want to know more about my experience diving BlackBeard Cruises in the Bahamas, click here.
Visiting Humber Bay at night
Night diving isn’t just for coral reefs. My local diving sight in Humber Bay Lake, Ontario, Canada. It is usually a lovely sight to visit if you’re looking for poor visibility, a muddy, silty bottom with almost no animals/fish to see. Don’t think I am not grateful to have this site half an hour from home because it is a great spot just to blow bubbles, practice some skills and get wet. But this site has never let me down on a night dive because I dive it so often. It is very familiar, yet still, on a night dive, I am always amazed how it can look quite different. Still, more importantly, I always encounter more wildlife at night there than ever during the day, I have seen large Pike come in to hunt at night, there will often be large schools of bait fish and fry around at night, and during the fall season, I’ll see a large school of salmon at night getting reading to start their fall run at the mouth of the river.
Want to know more about our local dive spot, Humber Bay? Click here.
As you can see, night diving adds some challenges to typical day diving. With a few pieces of equipment and some extra preparations, there is no reason to miss out on all the fantastic adventures and experiences one can have with night diving.
This is not meant to be an alternative to training; this blog is my personal experience. Each diver dives at their own discretion.