GILI TRAWANGAN, LOMBOK, INDONESIA
After talking for awhile with Carl from Dive Indonesia, who's taken the Canadians on a few dive trips, I decided to join them all last night for my very first night dive.
Before doing so, though, we all had to read the "Night Diving" chapter of the Adventures in Diving textbook and answer some questions in order to obtain our PADI night-diving certification. Once that was accomplished, just after sunset we took a boat out into the channel, got our equipment in order, and jumped over the side. We then descended to a depth of 20 meters and drift-dived for close to an hour along the channel, past an artificial reef that's recently been created there.
I have to say that night diving was a really amazing experience--not frightening at all, but in fact very calm and peaceful (and a little surreal). I had thought it would be pretty dark down there, but there were eight of us with torches, and the visibility was really good, so we could illuminate a decent amount of the sea floor.
Most of the reef fish that are active during the day were either hiding in holes or "asleep," which was interesting to see. For example, we came across several really big porcupine fish just resting on the bottom, apparently snoozing, and when we shone our lights on them, they would groggily shuffle off.
Nocturnal species like cardinal fish, squirrel fish, and bigeyes, on the other hand, were out and about, as were sea urchins and crabs. I also saw dozens of lionfish roaming around, and lots of banded coral shrimp. We also encountered a annoyed-looking octopus, a miniature cuttlefish, and a blue-spotted stingray, along with a cluster of really cool-looking shrimpfish, two banded pipefish, and a big multicolored nudibranch (sea slug).
Not having done a night dive before, I really wasn't sure what to expect, but it turned out to be one of the most interesting dives I've been on. I only wish I had the underwater camera for this one!
After talking for awhile with Carl from Dive Indonesia, who's taken the Canadians on a few dive trips, I decided to join them all last night for my very first night dive.
Before doing so, though, we all had to read the "Night Diving" chapter of the Adventures in Diving textbook and answer some questions in order to obtain our PADI night-diving certification. Once that was accomplished, just after sunset we took a boat out into the channel, got our equipment in order, and jumped over the side. We then descended to a depth of 20 meters and drift-dived for close to an hour along the channel, past an artificial reef that's recently been created there.
I have to say that night diving was a really amazing experience--not frightening at all, but in fact very calm and peaceful (and a little surreal). I had thought it would be pretty dark down there, but there were eight of us with torches, and the visibility was really good, so we could illuminate a decent amount of the sea floor.
Most of the reef fish that are active during the day were either hiding in holes or "asleep," which was interesting to see. For example, we came across several really big porcupine fish just resting on the bottom, apparently snoozing, and when we shone our lights on them, they would groggily shuffle off.
Nocturnal species like cardinal fish, squirrel fish, and bigeyes, on the other hand, were out and about, as were sea urchins and crabs. I also saw dozens of lionfish roaming around, and lots of banded coral shrimp. We also encountered a annoyed-looking octopus, a miniature cuttlefish, and a blue-spotted stingray, along with a cluster of really cool-looking shrimpfish, two banded pipefish, and a big multicolored nudibranch (sea slug).
Not having done a night dive before, I really wasn't sure what to expect, but it turned out to be one of the most interesting dives I've been on. I only wish I had the underwater camera for this one!
posted by John Kuge at 7:07 PM
1 Comments:
It's been a long time since I went diving, but my night dives were some of the most memorable - particularly looking towards the surface and watching your bubbles rise up into the darkness or turning off all of the lights and watching the luminescent glow of some of the critters swimming about.
James LeBleu
Post a Comment
<< Home