Best Places to Night Dive

While night diving may seem dangerous, it can actually be quite rewarding for those divers who dare to take the plunge. For out of the darkness of night comes the unexpected, the weird, the unique, and the wild. Creatures that otherwise hide away during the day become incredibly active at night, prowling across the ocean floor or patrolling the reefs in search of their next meal. Meanwhile, the coral is known to take on new appearances, reflecting never before seen colors in the glow of divers’ lights. It truly is a unique experience that allows divers to fully explore and understand the inner workings of the ocean. If you’re planning your own nighttime adventures, read on to learn more about our top picks for night diving.

 

Manta Night Dive – Kona, Hawaii 

 

Often referred to as the best night dive in the world, Hawaii’s Manta Night Dive provides divers the unique opportunity to get up close and personal with the ocean’s most graceful dancers – manta rays. Located off the coast of Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island lies the home of these majestic creatures; with 240 manta rays in residence, you’re sure to encounter at least a few of them on pretty much any dive that you take in these waters. What makes the night dive so special, however, is the way in which the manta rays are called to the divers. During each dive, dive operators will shine powerful spotlights into the water, which attracts light-seeking plankton. This in turn draws in the manta rays, who come over to grab their nightly dinner. As a diver below (or even a snorkeler above), you’ll have front row seats to this feeding frenzy. Watch along as the manta rays swoop, glide, somersault, and dive through the illuminated waters. 

 

Fluorescent Night Dive – Bonaire Marine Park, Bonaire

 

Fluorescent diving, also referred to as glow diving, is a relatively new concept in scuba. Through the use of specialized UV lights and yellow mask filters, divers are able to illuminate coral reefs, revealing a spectacularly colorful underwater world that isn’t observable to the naked eye. Marine life, such as fish, worms, shrimp, eels, and even the coral itself, can take on vibrant shades of pink, purple and green in this bioluminescent underwater light show. One of the best places to experience this unique form of diving is at the Bonaire Marine Park, where about 25 percent of the marine life is fluorescent – meaning it responds to UV lights with a burst of color. Located on the island of Bonaire, just off the coast of Venezuela in the southern Caribbean Sea, the Bonaire Marine Park is one of the top destinations in the world for fluorescent night diving.

 

Maaya Thila – Ari Atoll, Maldives

 

Maaya Thila is known as one of the best liveaboard dive sites in the world. Located off the coast of Ari Atoll in the Maldives, Maaya Thila is home to a large reef that is 80 meters in diameter and drops from depths of six meters to thirty meters. Throughout this reef, you’ll find a wide variety of reef fish, as well as whitetip reef sharks, grey reef sharks, stingrays, barracuda, nurse sharks, and giant trevally. It is the smaller white tip reef sharks, however, that draw in divers and makes night diving here so exciting. Once the sun sets, the sharks begin their nightly hunt, partaking in an action-packed feeding frenzy that you won’t want to miss. The sharks have even learned to use the lights from divers and the dive boats to their advantage, following the path of light as they patrol the reef, searching for their prey.

 

Tobia Arba – Safaga, Egypt

 

Commonly known as the “seven pillars,” Tobia Arba is a collection of seven pinnacles that rise fifteen meters from the sandy ocean floor to the water’s surface. Located off the shores of Safaga, Egypt, this dive site is home to a plethora of soft and hard corals, all of which play host to a variety of marine life. Some of the more popular macro creatures that can be discovered here include clownfish, glassfish, small crabs, porcelain shrimp, and nudibranchs. There are also quite a few rare species of fish that call this area home, such as scorpionfish, crocodile fish, stonefish, pipefish, and the Napoleon wrasse. At night, the corals along the seven pillars come alive as many of these creatures are nocturnal. If you’re lucky, you may even spot an octopus, a blue spotted ray, turtles, or the ever-elusive leopard shark.

 

Black-Water Diving – Tahiti and Moorea Islands, French Polynesia

 

One of the scariest and most nerve-wracking night dives has got to be black-water diving. In this type of diving, scuba divers are tied to the bottom of the dive boat and suspended in the middle of pitch-black water. With no light to be seen, they are left to observe the ocean as it truly is in the middle of the night. One of the most popular places to do this is in the deep channel that lies between Tahiti and the Moorea Islands in French Polynesia, where depths can reach up to hundreds of meters. While the deep ocean is home to many marine animals, what divers come here looking for are the bioluminescent creatures and larval organisms that rise towards the surface each night to feed. These otherworldly creatures, with their transparent and strangely configured bodies, often create their own lights, providing a unique and colorful show for those brave enough to face the darkness. 

 

Nudi Falls – Lembeh Strait, Indonesia

 

Nudi Falls, located in the Lembeh Strait of Indonesia, is widely regarded as the muck diving capital of the world. Muck diving is a broadly used term to describe diving that involves slowly and patiently exploring the ocean floor for any creatures or critters that may call it home. It doesn’t necessarily have the same “wow” and glamor as reef diving, but it does promise to deliver unique and interesting sights that most divers overlook. Those who take the time to explore Nudi Falls will be rewarded with a diverse population of small marine life, including nudibranchs, bobtail squids, cuttlefish, soft coral cowries, pygmy seahorses, blue-ringed octopuses, and much more. Since many of these tiny creatures are most active at night, the best time to find them is during night dives – making it one of the best muck night dives in the world. 




References:

 

Scuba Diving: https://www.scubadiving.com/best-destinations-for-night-diving#page-9

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