Night Diving

Night Diving

Night diving is one of the most exciting and thrilling aspects of scuba diving, but preparation is very important to ensure divers don’t run into dangers.

Before embarking on any night dive, it is imperative to be familiar with the dive site and for at least one person in the group to have dived the site previously, during the day.  When you are underwater in the dark, it is very easy to get disoriented and people are naturally more inclined to panic.  Night divers rely on their dive compasses and dive lights.  Night diving groups should be small – preferably no more than three divers, as it is easy for members of the group to go astray.  Lastly, you shouldn’t descend to deep on a night dive, and try not to touch anything, particularly the ocean floor – you never know what is lurking down there!!!   And, a rule that applies to all scuba diving, don’t drink alcohol or consume any drugs before going on a night dive.  Stories are told of groups of partying divers who, in the middle of the night, after a bottle of rum, think it would be fun to go on a night dive. Don’t even think about it.  It’s not safe, and the results can be horrifying.

Assuming you’re sober and all the aforementioned precautions have been taken, night diving will be one of the best experiences of your diving career, and you don’t need to be an experienced diver to enjoy a night dive – just so long as you are with an experienced divemaster.  Many divers take night diving as one of the specialty courses on their Advanced Open Water Diver PADI certification.

The underwater marine life that you see at night is often very different to what you will see in the daytime – some of the fish are different, others are sleeping and some even change color by night.  By the glow of your dive light, the array of colors is amazing; lucky divers will see squid putting on an amazing color show, their strange bodies changing through almost every color in the rainbow.  Probably the most memorable part of a night dive for anyone is the point where all divers turn off their lights for a moment and play with the phosphorescent plankton abundant in the water – kind of the ocean’s equivalent to lightning bugs.

Night diving in the Maldives is best at the following sites: Maayaa Thila, Nassimo Thila, Fotteyo, Kuda Thila and Kandooma Thila.