Blackbeard's Day 2 Night Dive

The Night Dive on Madison Avenue led to meeting lots of fish, as well as a different entry technique.

Due to the presence of Sea Wasps, a kind of stinging jellyfish, the recommendation was for a lights off, negative entry.

Lights off, as the wasps are attracted to light, and negative so you don't pop on the surface but instead immediately drop below them and keep descending.  

You descend into darkness, swim underwater to the down-line and turn on your light, meetup with your dive buddy and then get to exploring the reef.

Madison Avenue was hopping at night,  with lots of activity, including a night-time tuna encounter:

 

a large school of fish:

 As well as a huge spiny lobster:

Lots of neat things to see on Madison Ave at night.

It also led to an unexpected encounter and a realization:

You're not afraid of being alone in the dark. 

You're afraid of being NOT alone in the dark.

Because coming out of the dark we saw this.

Yes, that's a shark. It's an oceanic reef shark.

Note that there was no sound associated with the shark's appearance nor with his vanishing out of view of our lights. No Jaws theme played in the background, he was swift and silent and appeared as if out of nowhere without any warning.

My first shark encounter, and at night to boot.

It also really didn't help that my dive buddy, as the shark disappeared into the darkness beyond the reach of our lights, and then reappeared again, reached out and clamped down on my arm, hard.

Thanks for that, Jeff!  

Once I both verified that a shark had not just clamped down on my arm, and my heart rate got back to normal, we continued the dive.  

The shark checked us out a bit, and got kinda close a few times but wasn't hostile, just curious as to what these bubble-making beings were doing around his reef.

That was a heckuva exciting and neat night dive and shark encounter both.

Back on the boat we exchanged stories of the encounter with other divers, some of whom were also buzzed by the shark, and some who never saw it.  We'd be seeing more sharks in the near future.