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Do you like night dives?

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Corals beginning to feed as the sun goes down for a night dive
Corals beginning to feed as the sun goes down for a night dive

For a person who is largely visually oriented, night dives can be a little bit disconcerting, particularly the first several times.   The first night dive I did was in an advanced scuba class in a Texas lake.  The visibility might have been 15 feet and at night I was lucky to be able to see the fins of the diver in front of me.  I probably stayed pretty close because even with a bright underwater torch there was not much to see and even then I didn’t want to get left behind.  At one point we turned out all the lights and the dive instructor cracked open a chemical light to simulate bio-florescence.  It was interesting but it would be years that passed before I had a chance to see bio-florescence in the ocean.

Roll forward several years and I had a chance to do a night dive in Playa Del Carmen.  I had just started shooting a digital camera underwater and was still at the stage of chasing sea creatures in hopes of capturing an interesting image. Well I learned on a drift dive at night that was not a good strategy because we ran out of reef pretty quickly.

Roll forward a few more years and I was introduced to “glow diving” in the Cayman islands.  The concept was shine a blue light on corals and other creatures and see whether they had any luminescence.  This time I was moving pretty slowing and acquired a few interesting captures.

Brain coral luminescence
Brain coral luminescence

Well after that trip I started studying bio-luminescence and found that there is actually quite a lot written about the subject.  I also made a few contacts such as Fire dive who pointed me in the right direction for further inquiry.

Anemone with blue light
Anemone with blue light

Assuming I can keep TSA from breaking my filters I think there is quite a bit more to see in my night dives than I would have ever guessed.

 

 

Bahamas, wide angle

Do divers have an obligation to help conserve the environment?

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A 200 plus pound Black Grouper at Shark Junction
A 200 plus pound Black Grouper at Shark Junction in the Bahamas

I used to think of the ocean as endless and its fish life as unaffected by people.  I was wrong on both counts.  Yes, over 70% of the earth is covered in water.  Yes, if you were to take the average depth of the ocean and take out the lows and the highs the average depth would be over 4,000 feet deep, or at least so I have read.

But, the ocean that can be explored by recreational divers is only 130 feet deep.  And, within that depth in many places, fisherman have and are over fishing many species. Many variety of grouper, such as black grouper are becoming much rarer to see in large part because they do taste good.  For the most part I have stopped eating grouper because of the pressure on them.  Other species of fish are also being fished to extinction.

Isn’t it odd, that lion fish, an invasive species in the Caribbean are thriving and doing so at the expense of native fish such as the parrot fish who is necessary to reefs in order to keep algae at bay.

Are you the scourge of the Caribbean?
Are you the scourge of the Caribbean?

So I will continue to eat lion fish, in hopes that someone will figure out how to eradicate them from the Caribbean, and avoid grouper in hopes that they will make a recovery.  And, I will continue to bring up trash when I see it in the ocean in hopes that by removing it some small part of the wild life that remains in the sea will be there the next time I return.  Its an enormous task in reality.  I hope you will join me in my small little effort to save the sea.