This article was written by divers and writers at LiveAboard.com
News
10 Best Night Diving Destinations
Go night diving and you’ll see the ocean in an entirely different way as your torch beam lights up reefs busy with activity. Different marine life come out at night and predators such as lionfish and sharks become much more active. It’s a great type of diving for renewing your interest in familiar dive sites and makes you pay attention to one small dive site area at a time.
Don’t miss it. Here are our top night dives to try around the world…
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Hawaii
Image: Aggressor AdventuresHawaii is renowned for its exceptional night diving with manta rays. Go night diving off Kona and you can watch manta rays barrel-roll and feed in the light of your torch. Suitable for snorkelers and divers alike, it’s one of the best night dive experiences in the world.
The Kona Aggressor II offers manta night dives as part of their Hawaii liveaboard safaris.
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Great Barrier Reef, Australia
There are a variety of fun options for night diving at the Great Barrier Reef.
The OceanQuest liveaboard offers outer reef Shark in the Dark night dives, giving you a chance to swim with numerous reef sharks at night. You can also try Fluoro Night Diving with this liveaboard. Specialist torches and mask filters are used to bring fluorescent underwater landscapes to life.
For a real spectacle, visit the Great Barrier Reef during a mass coral spawning event. These events are witnessed by few people and occurs at the reef between November and December each year. Flynn Reef has a great variety of corals and is known for its spawning events. You can see this during night dives with the Pro Dive Cairns fleet.
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Maldives
Maldives scuba diving is famed for diverse diving amidst idyllic atolls. Don’t miss a liveaboard safari to Felidhoo Atoll for a real Maldivian highlight. You can go night diving with huge numbers of nurse sharks and stingrays at Felidhoo’s Alimatha Jetty dive site.
Coming close to divers, the sharks and rays provide great photographic opportunities against the dark waters.
The Scubaspa fleet and Duke of York offer safaris that include this special dive.
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Costa Rica
Costa Rica is paradise for shark diving during the day and doesn’t disappoint at night either. Be sure to take a dive at Manuelita Coral Garden for the chance to dive with numerous hunting whitetip sharks. Emerging to hunt fish, crustaceans and octopi, these flexible and fast-paced sharks are fascinating to watch in action when the sun goes down.
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Myanmar
Myanmar is still relatively off the radar for most divers and yet it offers diverse marine ecosystems and hundreds of unexplored islands, just perfect for liveaboard cruises. Great Swinton Island is a good spot for coral reef night dives and bioluminescence.
Shark Cave offers night diving along a wall and rocky outcrops with plenty of marine life. Look carefully and you might spot decorated sponge crabs, plus Durban dancing and mantis shrimps.
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Egypt’s Red Sea
Both Tiran in the north and Elphinstone in the south offer great Egypt night diving. Dive in and you can explore dramatic walls and reefs as you watch lionfish hunt in the light of your torch. For an eerie experience, try night diving the huge Thistlegorm wreck. Impressive during the day, this wreck is even more so at night.
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The Philippines
Teeming with life, thanks to its position in the Coral Triangle, the Philippines Visayas islands offers exceptional diving both day and night. If you’re a fan of muck diving, make sure you go muck night diving in the Visayas. The light from your torch will bring the colours of critters to life, making excellent photographs.
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Indonesia
Another great spot for night diving, the Lembeh Strait is known as the ‘muck diving capital of the world’. Home to an array of weird and wonderful critters it is not to be missed. Many of the critters are very active at night, making Lembeh Strait even better at night than during the day.
This is especially so at Nudi Falls. This wall drops down to a coral field and sandy bottom, where you can spot cuttlefish, rare nudibranchs and more.
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Cayman Islands
You can try your hand at wreck night diving at the Cayman Islands. The USS Kittiwake is ideal for night dives as she has spacious corridors and clear waters, making her easy to navigate. You can also night dive the Balboa and Ore Verde wrecks. The Cayman Aggressor V offers safaris that include wreck night dives.
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Papua New Guinea
To truly get away from it all, go long-haul and explore the pristine waters of Papua New Guinea. Seemingly left behind by the modern world, the islands of PNG have untouched dive sites busy with marine life. Go night diving and you can explore PNG’s crystal-clear lagoons, enjoying the diverse macro and reef life found there. With few other divers around, it’s like exploring a whole new world.
What Night Diving gear do you need?
You’ll need a good dive torch for night dives. It’s a good idea to take a spare torch and attach a marker to your BCD or tank so you can be seen easily by your buddy and guide.
What diving skills do night divers need?
- The most important skill you need is the ability to stay calm
- It can be unnerving diving in the dark at first, so relax and stay close to your buddy and dive group
- It’s worth practising the signals you’ll use during your night dive, as torch signals are often used in place of hand signals
- Set up and check your equipment during the day, or under adequate lighting, so you don’t miss something
Blogs
Northern Red Sea Reefs and Wrecks Trip Report, Part 3: The Mighty Thistlegorm
Jake Davies boards Ghazala Explorer for an unforgettable Red Sea diving experience…
Overnight, the wind picked up, making the planned morning dive a bit bumpy on the Zodiacs to the drop point on Thomas Reef. There, we would dive along the reef before descending through the canyon and then passing under the arch before ascending the wall with a gentle drift. The site provided great encounters with more pelagic species, including shoals of large barracuda, tuna, and bigeye trevally.
Once back on the boat, it was time to get everything tied down again as we would head back south. This time, with the wind behind us, heading to Ras Mohammed to dive Jackfish Alley for another great gentle drift wall dive before then heading up the coast towards the Gulf of Suez to moor up at the wreck of the Thistlegorm. This being the highlight wreck dive of the trip and for many onboard, including myself, it was the first time diving this iconic wreck. I had heard so much about the wreck from friends, and globally, this is a must on any diver’s list. Fortunately for us, there was only one other boat at the site, which was a rarity. A great briefing was delivered by Ahmed, who provided a detailed background about the wreck’s history along with all the required safety information as the currents and visibility at the site can be variable.
Kitting up, there was a lot of excitement on deck before entering the water and heading down the shoreline. Descending to the wreck, there was a light northerly current which reduced the visibility, making it feel more like the conditions that can be found off the Welsh coast. At 10m from the bottom, the outline of the wreck appeared as we reached the area of the wreck which had been bombed, as our mooring line was attached to part of the propeller shaft. Arriving on deck, instantly everywhere you looked there were many of the supplies which the ship was carrying, including Bren Carrier tanks and projectiles that instantly stood out.
We headed around the exterior, taking a look at the large propeller and guns mounted on deck before entering the wreck on the port side to take a look in the holds. It was incredible to see all the trucks, Norton 16H, and BSA motorcycles still perfectly stacked within, providing a real snapshot in time.
Overall, we had four dives on the Thistlegorm, where for all of the dives we were the only group in the water, and at times, there were just three of us on the whole wreck, which made it even more special, especially knowing that most days the wreck has hundreds of divers. Along with the history of the wreck, there was plenty of marine life on the wreck and around, from big green turtles to batfish, along with shoals of mackerel being hunted by trevally. Some unforgettable dives.
The final leg of the trip saw us cross back over the Suez Canal to the Gobal Islands where we planned to stay the night and do three dives at the Dolphin House for the potential of sharing the dive with dolphins. The site, which included a channel that was teeming with reef fish, especially large numbers of goatfish that swam in large shoals along the edge of the reef. These were nice relaxing dives to end the week. Unfortunately, the dolphins didn’t show up, which was okay as like all marine life they are difficult to predict and you can’t guarantee what’s going to be seen. With the last dive complete, we headed back to port for the final night where it was time to clean all the kit and pack before the departure flight the next day.
The whole week from start to finish on Ghazala Explorer was amazing; the boat had all the facilities you need for a comfortable week aboard. The crew were always there to help throughout the day and the chefs providing top quality food which was required after every dive. The itinerary providing some of the best diving with a nice mixture of wreck and reef dives. I would recommend the trip to anyone, whether it’s your first Red Sea liveaboard in the Red Sea or you’re revisiting. Hopefully, it’s not too long before I head back to explore more of the Red Sea onboard Ghazala Explorer.
To find out more about the Northern Red Sea reef and wrecks itineraries aboard Ghazala Explorer, or to book, contact Scuba Travel now:
Email: dive@scubatravel.com
Tel: +44 (0)1483 411590
Photos: Jake Davies / Avalon.Red
Blogs
Northern Red Sea Reefs and Wrecks Trip Report, Part 2: Wall to Wall Wrecks
Jake Davies boards Ghazala Explorer for an unforgettable Red Sea diving experience…
The second day’s diving was a day full of wreck diving at Abu Nuhas, which included the Chrisoula K, Carnatic, and Ghiannis D. The first dive of the day was onto the Chrisoula K, also known as the wreck of tiles. The 98m vessel remains largely intact where she was loaded with tiles which can be seen throughout the hold. The stern sits at 26m and the bow just below the surface. One of the highlights of the wreck is heading inside and seeing the workroom where the machinery used for cutting the tiles are perfectly intact. The bow provided some relaxing scenery as the bright sunlight highlighted the colours of the soft coral reef and the many reef fish.
Following breakfast, we then headed to the next wreck, which was the Carnatic. The Carnatic is an 89.9m sail steamer vessel that was built in Britain back in 1862. She ran aground on the reef back in 1869 and remains at 27m. At the time, she was carrying a range of items, including 40,000 sterling in gold. An impressive wreck where much of the superstructure remains, and the two large masts lay on the seafloor. The wooden ribs of the hull provide structures for lots of soft corals, and into the stern section, the light beams through, bouncing off the large shoals of glass fish that can be found using the structure as shelter from the larger predators that are found outside of the wreck.
The final wreck at Abu Nuhas was the Ghiannis D, originally called ‘Shoyo Maru,’ which was 99.5m long and built in Japan back in 1969 before becoming a Greek-registered cargo ship in 1980. The ship then ran aground on the reef on April 19th, 1983, and now sits at the bottom at a depth of 27m. Heading down the line, the stern of the ship remains in good condition compared to the rest of the hull. The highlight of the wreck, though, is heading into the stern section and down the flights of stairs to enter the engine room, which remains in good condition and is definitely worth exploring. After exploring the interior section of the ship, we then headed over to see the rest of the superstructure, where it’s particularly interesting to see the large table corals that have grown at the bow relatively quickly considering the date the ship sank. After surfacing and enjoying some afternoon snacks, we made sure everything was strapped down and secured as we would be heading north and crossing the Gulf of Suez, where the winds were still creating plenty of chop.
The next morning, it was a short hop to Ras Mohammed Nature Reserve for the next couple of days of diving. The 6am wake-up call came along with the briefing for the first site we would be diving, which was Shark & Yolanda. The low current conditions allowed us to start the dive at Anemone City, where we would drift along the steep, coral-filled wall. These dives involved drifts, as mooring in Ras Mohammed wasn’t allowed to protect the reefs. As a dive site, Shark & Yolanda is well-known and historically had a lot of sharks, but unfortunately not so many in recent years, especially not so early in the season. However, there was always a chance when looking out into the blue.
The gentle drift took us along the steep walls of the site, with plenty of anemone fish to be seen and a huge variety of corals. It wasn’t long into the dive before we were accompanied by a hawksbill turtle, who drifted with us between the two atolls before parting ways. Between the two reefs, the shallow patch with parts of coral heads surrounded by sand provided the chance to see a few blue-spotted stingrays that were mainly resting underneath the corals and are always a pleasure to see. With this being the morning dive, the early sunlight lit up the walls, providing tranquil moments. Looking out into the blue, there was very little to be seen, but a small shoal of batfish shimmering underneath the sunlight was a moment to capture as we watched them swim by as they watched us.
Towards the end of the dive, we stopped at the wreck of the Jolanda where the seafloor was scattered with toilets from the containers it was carrying. This provided a unique site to make a safety stop, which was also accompanied by a large barracuda slowly swimming by, along with a hawksbill turtle calmly swimming over the reef as the sun rays danced in the distance.
For the next dive, we headed north to the Strait of Tiran to explore the reefs situated between Tiran Island and Sharm El Sheik, which were named after the British divers who had found them. We started on Jackson before heading to Gordons Reef, where we also did the night dive. All the atolls at these sites provided stunning, bustling coral reefs close to the surface and steep walls to swim along, which always provided the opportunity to keep an eye out for some of the larger species that can be seen in the blue. Midwater around Jackson Reef was filled with red-toothed triggerfish and shoals of banner fish, which at times were so dense that you couldn’t see into the blue. Moments went by peacefully as we enjoyed the slow drift above the reef, watching these shoals swim around under the mid-afternoon sun.
The night dive at Gordon’s Reef was mainly among the stacks of corals surrounded by sand, which was great to explore under the darkness. After some time circling the corals, we came across what we were really hoping to find, and that was an octopus hunting on the reef. We spent the majority of the dive just watching it crawl among the reef, blending into its changing surroundings through changes in colour and skin texture. It’s always so fascinating and captivating to watch these incredibly intelligent animals, in awe of their ability to carry out these physical changes to perfectly blend into the reef. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the boat to enjoy a well-deserved tasty dinner prepared by the talented chefs onboard.
Check in for the 3rd and final part of this series from Jake tomorrow!
To find out more about the Northern Red Sea reef and wrecks itineraries aboard Ghazala Explorer, or to book, contact Scuba Travel now:
Email: dive@scubatravel.com
Tel: +44 (0)1483 411590
Photos: Jake Davies / Avalon.Red
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