Diving at night seems simple, right? You just need a flashlight? Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, and if it’s limited visibility, depending on the cause of that limited visibility, a flashlight may not be enough. It’s time to learn a bit about how to deal with it. All of the major dive agencies offer a night or night/limited visibility course. I took SSI’s Night and Limited Visibility course through Diventures in Springfield. Molly was, again, my instructor.
Questions That Need to Be Answered
Diving at night is not as simple as grabbing a flashlight. There are a few other considerations. Here are some of the questions that came up in the class.
- How will you navigate back to the shore/boat?
- How will you navigate back to your buoy?
- How will boats on the water see your buoy so they know to avoid it?
- How will your buddy see your hand signals?
- How will your buddy see/find you?
- How do you avoid temporarily blinding other divers with your light?
How is Limited Visibility Different Than Night Diving?
When diving in limited visibility, a light may not let you see better. For example, if there is heavy particulate matter in the water, a flashlight may reflect off it and not really help a lot.
Because I dive in lakes, we see this a lot. The worst I’ve been in was visibility such that if I stretched my ungloved hand out in front of me, I could not see my own fingers. A flashlight not only did not help, but it also actually made it worse.
Finding the Shore or Boat
This is probably the part of the course with the most useful information. The simple answer is lights. For example, if you put lights on shore, more than one, and at different heights, it gives you the ability to figure out where you are on the surface in relation to those lights. For a boat, it may be as simple as the boat dropping a light over the side below the water on a line. Above water, boats are already required to have multiple lights that provide information about the direction the boat is headed. Rather than rehash it, you can read a basic summary of boat lighting at Boat Navigation Lights Rules: Illustrated Beginners Guide.
Finding the Buoy and Flag
The buoy and dive flag create a slightly different challenge. You need to be able to navigate back to the flag underwater, but others (especially boats) need to see the flag above the surface. Again, the solution is lights. Making the flag visible is as simple as figuring out how to rig a light illuminating the flag on the buoy.
Oddly enough, I haven’t been able to locate a product for sale that serves this purpose yet. The challenge of finding the buoy and flag underwater was actually rather simple. A knotted loop in the rope/line for the buoy, located at 15 feet, with a small light hanging from it, serves not only to illuminate the way to the buoy but also, when diving during the day, provides a visual reference for safety stops. I’ve made extensive use of it since adding it to my line.
Finding Your Dive Buddy
This can also be a challenge. The answer here is . . . light. Well, that’s part of the answer. The second part is to stay close and possibly even in contact. There are many small lights designed to be hung off your tank valve to make you visible to other divers. But diving at night means you need to stay a lot closer to your buddy than you might during the day.
In true limited visibility, you may need to stay in contact. Yes, the best method is to hold their hand. Another thing to keep in mind. If you lose your buddy, the standard practice to look around for a minute or two then surface still holds true, but unlike a daytime dive, at night, seeing your buddy’s bubbles may not be as easy or even possible.
Why Dive At Night?
Given the extra challenges, why dive at night? The biggest answer and the main reason is that some aquatic life is nocturnal. You’ll see and hear stuff in the water you don’t see during the day. I’ve not been in the ocean yet. All my diving has been in lakes and quarries (and one spring). Who knew catfish actually make a lot of noise at night? I didn’t until I actually heard it. They’re a lot more active and I’ve seen more catfish in a few night dives than I have in ten times as many daytime dives.
One other advantage to night diving, especially for lakes, is that there are a lot less boats around. The traffic is significantly reduced so it’s calmer and more peaceful.
Why Dive in Low Visibility?
This is a bit of a loaded question. For those of you who dive in the ocean all the time, you would consider my best visibility to be low vis for you by comparison. Lakes just by their general nature tend to have much lower visibility than the ocean.
The absolute best I’ve ever had was about 40 feet and that was a bit of a miracle – calm day, no boats or other divers stirring stuff up, in the winter, a decent time away from the last rain or storm, and only once. Most of it for me has been in the 10-20 foot range (less than 10 meters). Several times it’s been as low as 2-3 feet (under 1 meter).
Diving to See
Why would you do that? Why dive in visibility of only 3 feet? The answer to that depends on why you dive. I’ve found, in general, two types of divers when it comes to visibility. There are those who dive to see something. They want the colorful reefs, the fish, the sharks, the mantas, the whales, the wrecks, and whatever else they can look at and be amazed. That’s not a bad reason to dive at all. In fact, it’s a great reason and I do dive some because of that. However, it’s not the primary reason I dive.
Diving to Be
The rest of us (and we are a minority) dive because we love being in the water. I don’t care if I’m blind in the water; if I can navigate by touch, know the dive site, and take appropriate safety measures based on my training, I’ll dive in 2-foot visibility just to spend time in the water enjoying the feeling of gliding through the water.
If you doubt the value of diving with nothing to see, read a bit about Jessica Pita at her site Flying Blind. She’s a PADI Ambassador. Jessica is also blind. Yet she finds freedom and joy in diving. It’s all in perspective.
One of the worst visibility dives I’ve had was at Jake’s Point on Table Rock Lake. Table Rock Lake in the summer is absolutely beautiful above the surface and has absolutely horrible visibility underwater, especially between the surface and about 50 feet (about 15 meters). In this particular dive, we managed to find our way to an old trampoline frame that’s about 20-25 feet deep. Rather than mess with fumbling around, we just practiced buoyancy swimming in circles in site of the frame. I practiced hovering, and spent one 5 minute stretch hovering just above the bottom watching 3 perch. I’ll take that any day as a decent dive.
Conclusion
The class was good. The class was well taught. Anyone who enjoys diving would benefit from it because of learning a few extra steps for enhanced safety when diving at night. And honestly, that’s the big deal about most of the specialty classes. Could you just grab a couple of dive lights and go diving at night? Sure. Would you be as safe as you would after some training and practice with an experienced instructor? Nope. So was it worth the money? Absolutely. But I’m the kind of guy who would rather spend a couple of hundred dollars to enhance my safety. I actually like life and won’t endanger mine because I’m too cheap to do things correctly.
