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.

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.

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.