Night Diving the Oceans Darkest Secret

By Jonny Marshall, Dive Master

As soon as the two words ‘night’ and ‘dive’ are put together in the same sentence, I’m listening. Scuba diving is probably my favorite thing to do in the world; the peace, the quiet, the weightlessness. There’s no feeling quite like it… until you make it pitch black, now we’re talking.

Now of course we are going to have a torch each (plus a spare because we’re great, safe divers), so it isn’t as scary as it might first seem but it does still have that initial creepy/eerie feeling that slightly more adventurous diver is searching for. The first opportunity a diver gets to night dive is during the Advanced Open Water Course. You can select it as one of your five dives which I personally think is super exciting that you´re able to night dive so early on in your diving journey.

WHAT MAKES A NIGHT DIVE SO SPECIAL?

Let´s start at the beginning. I love the pre night dive atmosphere. I always get that slightly nervous/excited feeling in my stomach. The same kind of feeling I get when I´m on my way to festival or a theme park; you know something great is about to happen. It´s just you and your fellow divers because everyone else in the dive center finished hours ago so it´s lovely and quiet and you´re setting up your equipment as the sun sets in the background – bliss!
The dive itself, of course, is the best part. When you first drop down it always takes a couple of minutes to settle in to the dive but as soon as you´re used to only being able to see what your or and your fellow divers torches are pointing at, the fun begins!

THE CREATURES IN THE DARKNESS.!

Your senses peak, every little noise or slight movement catches your attention due to the absolute darkness away from your torch light. The fish tend to be a lot braver at night with the cover of darkness so expect a lot more movement from various species. I was left temporarily disappointed a few weeks ago as my friendly Octopus friend wasn’t in his usual hiding place, but he quickly cheered me up as my buddy and I saw him gliding across a pile of rocks close by! You also tend to see Stingrays and Eagle Rays on the move a lot more as well. They chose to hunt at night time; there´s nothing quite like seeing a two meter long Eagle Ray shooting in to your torch light while you´re calmly looking at Parrot Fish chewing away at a rock.

UNFORGETTABLE NIGHT DIVING EXPERIENCES IN TENERIFE AND GRAN CANARIA

I´m sure it wouldn’t come as a surprise to you if I said I could sit here all day telling you about how much I love night diving, but I´m sure you´ve got better things to do with your day so I´ll leave it here. What I will say though, is that if you love your diving and you´ve never night dived before, do it. I guarantee your first night dive won´t be your last.