If your light goes all over the place, it will probably scare a few animals and end up in somebody's eyes, which is really not enjoyable when your pupils are fully dilated on a night dive so try to move your light carefully.īeware also of your 3 Dimensional space and of your bubbles going up.
The main thing to understand is your potential disturbance to other divers. It’s important to plan ahead for the dive to go smoothly and for everyone to enjoy it. A laser is also a great gadget to have to call your buddies when you see something cool. You will need the same gear as on a normal night dive: one torch + a spare torch for safety. Once the line is properly set up and launched, it is best to wait a few minutes for the lights to attract the deep-sea creatures before getting wet and that's the perfect time to discuss the dive plan and gear up. The buoy is a lot less subject to this and a lot easier for divers to follow. It is important to let the buoy drift detached to the boat as surface current or wind may push the boat one way (and the divers below the other way).
The line we use is weighted, 20 meters long with a big brightly lit buoy on the surface and powerful torches attached every 5 meters. The idea of blackwater diving is to dive on top of deep water with no other reference than a downline fitted with powerful torches.īecause you do not want to be disturbed by too many torches, it is better to go in small groups and divers usually go around the line in buddy pairs in search of the elusive marine critters floating nearby. Warning: At the beginning you will have a hard time identifying which species you saw, because some species look very different as juvenile from the adult individuals you might know so well.īut looking at the photos after the dive and making guesses with your dive buddies is actually part of the fun!
"Fiction becoming reality!" Remember all the foreign creatures you have seen in sci-fi movies, dreamlike transparent creatures and cute little aliens with long arms, they will all come back to give you a show on your blackwater dives.īlackwater diving in the Andaman Sea offers you a chance to get unique photos: you might be the only one that got to “interact” with a particular jellyfish, plankton or larva before it vanishes into the darkness.īig stuff is quite rare on a black water dive but if you look carefully, you are sure to see juvenile stages of various species of Andaman Sea fishes, gastropods (snails and slugs), cephalopods (squids or octopuses smaller than your fingernail) and crustaceans (Shrimps, crabs, mantis).Įvery blackwater diver hopes to see a paper Nautilus, a juvenile sailfish or a blanket octopus one day but there are so many more "wonderful little monsters" to get acquainted with.
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