Blackbeard's First Ocean Night Dive

I've dove in the ocean before.

I've dove at night before.

But I had never dove in the ocean at night before the trip.

On Day 1, after the Pablo Escobar plane dive, we then dove Benchmark reef, had lunch and then dove Barracuda Shoals. All the dives were in the 25-30 foot range, so nice shallow and easy.

We would then wait for the sun to set, and dive Barracuda Shoals again at night.

Blackbeard's as a matter of smart practice would always do the night dive on a site we had just dove in the light to both make us familiar with the terrain and to help develop a plan to find the ocean creatures that come out at night.

The ocean does get rather dark at night and since you're going around a rather large area, you want to be able to get back to the boat. Happily, Blackbeard's puts a strobe light out in the water by the bow so you can find your way back to the boat by covering your light and then looking for the strobe.  Blackbeard's also requires a tank beacon or glow-stick attached to your tank so your dive buddy and others can find you if your dive light is off.

We entered the water at 7:07pm and dropped down to 27 feet.

Getting decent photos at night in the ocean can be difficult.

There's lots of particulate and tiny creatures that are attached to the light that mess up your shots.

 

It's impressively dark down there, and beyond the throw of your light it's as if there is nothing visible at all, save for flashes of other diver's lights in the distance and the reassurance of the boat's strobe light.

We maneuvered through a swim-through in the coral at night, which felt rather different than when we did it in the light of day a few hours before.

 

See the spotted Eel under the rock?

He didn't want to pop out so that's the best shot I could get.

We also found a turtle:

He was all sorts of cute, and just chilled as he hung out on his rock watching us look at him.

After spending 45 minutes of bottom time in the dark, we ascended back up and got back on the boat.

We then changed and had a very tasty dinner after successfully completing 4 dives in one day.  Not a bad first night dive in the ocean at all.