I thought my friend and fellow dive instructor, Jim Brown, was joking
when he invited Skeeter and I to do a no-light, no-moon night dive with
him. Though I had turned my flashlight off during numerous night dives
for a few minutes each dive, I had never considered doing a night dive
with no light at all. And not even the glow of the moon? It sounded
absolutely insane!
I pictured myself crashing face first into fire coral and sea
urchins, ending up lost and by myself, and being left as shark bait. But
Jim assured me that he had done this lots of times in Mexico, and quite
a few times here in the Virgin Islands…and he lived to tell the tale.
He promised me that the experience would blow my mind. And it DID!
We geared up after the sun had completely disappeared. We each had a
light with us “just in case,” hanging from our BCD’s. Jim said he
usually does the first 5 minutes of the dive with the light on to get
oriented, but I talked him into not turning on our lights on at all. I
figured we might as well let our eyes adjust as quickly as possible.
We dived from the shore of Secret Harbor in St. Thomas. I was
nervous but excited. We waded into chest deep water, and then slowly
descended toward the sandy bottom. We waited a minute to let our eyes
adjust, and then Jim led us toward the reef. I was shocked how much I
could see.
Once
my eyes adjusted, I could see about 10-15 feet. I could not make out
details or colors, but I could make out the general shape of the reef,
sea urchins, and Jim and Skeeter. We followed the contour of the reef
around the edge of the bay, with reef to our right and a sandy grassy
plain to our left. It was incredibly peaceful in the dark but starry
sea. The only sound was the sound of our slow steady breathing.
It was incredible…like being in outer space! Tiny little lights
began firing all around us like twinkling stars. I could see the
silhouettes of Jim and Skeeter, especially the glowing pixie dust coming
off their fins. It reminded me of a scene out of Peter Pan. Every
time I waved my hands, hundreds of tiny little particles would magically
light up a bluish-green color. Even my bubbles were lighting up!
Strands of lights a few inches long were sequentially firing around us.
They were mesmerizing!
Part way into the dive we slowly came up to the surface to verify our
location. We could still see the slight glow of the lights from the
nearby houses on the cliff above, and we wanted to head toward the
darkest possible spot to maximize our experience.
Being on the surface when I can’t see what’s below me makes me feel
very vulnerable, so this triggered a series of unnerving thoughts. We
descended back down, and this time my breathing was not quite so slow or
relaxed as before. I tried to stop my imagination from running wild,
but heading out of the bay and around the corner into open water and
across a sandy grassy plain with no reef for protection added to my
increasingly stressful thought patterns.
FACT: Sharks are more active at night. FACT: There had not been an
unprovoked shark related death in the St. Thomas since 1963. I argued
back in forth in my head trying to decide whether or not it was logical
to be afraid.
I swam over and took Skeeter’s hand to help me calm myself down. It
helped. Watching Skeeter hanging upside down, flapping his arms like a
bird, swimming like a dolphin, and playing Street Fighter II and
shouting, “Haduuuken!” through his regulator as he threw balls of
bioluminescence into the darkness also helped me to laugh and refocus on
positive thoughts. Now my mind focused on the wondrous bioluminescent
lights blinking all around me instead of my imminent death.
Our dive was a shallow one, never dropping below 20 feet. Since we
were all experienced divers, we didn’t use up much air. We were able to
roughly monitor our air gauges because they had a slight glow to them.
Though we couldn’t read the exact number on our gauges, we could
clearly see that we were well in the safe zone. We enjoyed our dive so
much we stayed under for almost an hour and a half!
I am so grateful that my crazy friend Jim talked us into this. It
was seriously life changing. I searched the internet to try to find
evidence of anyone else doing such a crazy kind of night dive but found
none. I found talk about no light night dives during a full moon, but
absolutely nothing about no light night dives with no moon. This is an
experience that is absolutely incredible, but I would only recommend it
to extremely experienced divers. And of course only in the most ideal
of conditions.
I spent the entire next day researching bioluminescence, and can’t wait for my next opportunity to try this again.
The ocean is full of bioluminescent creatures. Most of the ones we
were seeing were DINOFLAGELLATES, single cell bioluminescent algae.
They collect energy during the daytime, so the higher the intensity of
light the previous day the more light they will emit. Even the
slightest movement deforms the cell and triggers a chemical reaction
which causes a flash of light.
I was really curious as to what the benefit of flashing could
possibly be for these dinoflagellates, and I found out that they do this
as a burglar alarm. When a creature comes close to eat them it
triggers the flash of light, which attracts a secondary predator. The
secondary predator comes and eats the creature that was trying to eat
the dinoflagellates!
We were also seeing some bioluminescence from COPEPODS, a small
transparent crustacean that releases chemicals into the water to produce
a glowing cloud of light to distract predators while they escape.
There are also tons of other bioluminescent creatures in the ocean.
Some jellyfish, comb jellies, bacteria, sea pens, fish (including the
cookie cutter shark), squid, anglerfish, and sea stars are
bioluminescent. Each of these creatures uses their bioluminescence for
defense, offense, and/or to attract a mate.
I learned so much from these two websites:
And one of my new heroes is a marine biologist by the name of Edith
Widder. You can watch a couple of her awesome videos by clicking below:
“The weird and wonderful world of bioluminescence”
“How we found the Giant Squid”
