I have realized that I really enjoy acquiring new skills, especially physical ones. While I find diving very enjoyable, I will admit that after a certain number of dives, all the coral and beautiful fish and even fantastic sea turtles start to blend together a little. You start to wonder then if you should continue paying rather steep prices to keep diving. It’s fun and exhilirating but you also start to feel like you’ve seen it. Or at least I did until I tried night diving.
Night diving is something new entirely. There are added elements of danger since it’s easy to become disoriented, lose your partner or ascend or descend too quickly. There are new skills to learn like how to signal in the light. Familiar sights look very different when diving at night and the beam of your flashlight has this very other-worldly quality about it.
The real magic comes though when you shut off the lights. Like in air, your eyes adjust to the darkness and you can pick out other divers off in the distant gloom with their own lights. More special still is the phyto plankton: Swirl your hand in front of your face and sparks trail off behind it, exactly like casting a spell in the movies. It’s a pretty intense and special feeling.