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
News
Dive Worldwide Announces Bite-Back as its Charity of the Year
Over the next 12 months, specialist scuba holiday company Dive Worldwide will be supporting Bite-Back Shark & Marine Conservation with donations collected from client bookings to any one of its stunning dive destinations around the world. The independently-owned operator expects to raise £3000 for the UK charity.
Manager at Dive Worldwide, Phil North, said: “We’re especially excited to work with Bite-Back and support its intelligent, creative and results-driven campaigns to end the UK trade in shark products and prompt a change in attitudes to the ocean’s most maligned inhabitant.”
Bite-Back is running campaigns to hold the media to account on the way it reports shark news along with a brand new nationwide education programme. Last year the charity was credited for spearheading a UK ban on the import and export of shark fins.
Campaign director at Bite-Back, Graham Buckingham, said: “We’re enormously grateful to Dive Worldwide for choosing to support Bite-Back. The company’s commitment to conservation helps set it apart from other tour operators and we’re certain its clients admire and respect that policy. For us, the affiliation is huge and helps us look to the future with confidence we can deliver against key conservation programmes.”
To launch the fundraising initiative, Phil North presented Graham Buckingham with a cheque for £1,000.
Visit Dive Worldwide to discover its diverse range of international scuba adventures and visit Bite-Back to learn more about the charity’s campaigns.
MORE INFORMATION
Call Graham Buckingham on 07810 454 266 or email graham@bite-back.com
Gear News
Scubapro Free Octopus Promotion 2024
Free Octopus with every purchase of a SCUBAPRO regulator system
Just in time for the spring season, divers can save money with the FREE OCTOPUS SPRING PROMOTION! Until July 31st SCUBAPRO offers an Octopus for free
with every purchase of a regulator system!
Get a free S270 OCTOPUS with purchase of these combinations:
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with A700
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with S620Ti
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with D420
MK25 EVO Din mit S620Ti-X
Get a free R105 OCTOPUS with purchase of the following combinations:
MK25 EVO or MK19 EVO with G260
MK25 EVO or MK17 EVO with S600
SCUBAPRO offers a 30-year first owner warranty on all regulators, with a revision period of two years or 100 dives. All SCUBAPRO regulators are of course certified according to the new European test standard EN250-2014.
Available at participating SCUBAPRO dealers. Promotion may not be available in all regions. Find an authorized SCUBAPRO Dealer at scubapro.com.
More information available on www.scubapro.com.
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