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<\/p>\nAre you getting sick & tired of diving the same local dive site every time?
\nHave you thought about diving it after dark?<\/p>\n
With Daylight Savings over night dive season has begun. While the thought of diving in the\u00a0dark may terrify some of you, initiated night divers can\u2019t wait to get out for their next night\u00a0dive.<\/p>\n
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The first thing you\u2019ll notice on descent is the dark (duh!) as your vision is restricted to what\u00a0is lit by your torch. Once your eyes adjust however, you will notice that the marine life you\u00a0saw in the daytime has disappeared, or can be seen sleeping on the reef, and a whole new
\nrange of species is now on display.<\/p>\n
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Shining your torch\u00a0on underwater formations focuses your attention and lets you see their\u00a0true colours. During the day, divers use natural sunlight to light up the reef but as you may\u00a0remember colours are lost as we descend to greater depths, with reds disappearing in ~5m.
\nTorches bring the full colour range back (This is also true for day dives).<\/p>\n
There are some different skills you need to successfully dive at night with communication\u00a0being key to a safe and enjoyable dive. You will need to learn how to signal with your torch\u00a0without blinding your dive buddy.\u00a0Navigating around the dive site can also be a challenge with your vision restricted by the\u00a0beam and strength of your torch. This is when you will be glad you have dived that local dive\u00a0site so many times you think you can dive it blindfolded!!<\/p>\n
Aside from opening up more time for diving as days get shorter why do we bother diving in\u00a0the dark? For most of us it is the different species that we encounter from octopus and\u00a0squid, seahorses and pipefish, to a whole range of crabs, shellfish and invertebrates that we\u00a0just never see during the day.\u00a0The weirdest thing I ever saw at a local dive site is a tie between a Burrowing Sea Cucumber\u00a0and a Stalked Jellyfish with the so-called Common Sandfish coming in close 3 rd . These species\u00a0took some researching before we were able to ID them, and these were seen at sites we\u00a0dive several times a month.<\/p>\n
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And if you are really lucky you will pick a night with loads of bioluminescence \u2013 block off your\u00a0torch light and watch as the bioluminescent plankton leaves trails behind you. If you really\u00a0want to take your night diving to the next level, try diving with a UV capable torch as the
\nfluorescent light\u00a0enhances the glowing colours in the reef.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are you getting sick & tired of diving the same local dive site every time? Have you thought about diving it after dark? With Daylight Savings over night dive season has begun. While the thought of diving in the\u00a0dark may terrify some of you, initiated night divers can\u2019t wait to get out for their next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divehq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}