Yesterday I completed the first half of my advanced scuba PADI course. There was an underwater navigation dive using landmarks and a compass, a buoyancy control dive teaching how to optimally control your buoyancy in the water and lastly a much belated night dive.
The night dive was by far the best I've done so far. It's an incredible experience to observe the underwater world at night, it is truly like exploring an alien landscape. The marine life behaves quite differently at night compared to in the day, many of the fish are quite fearless and will come close enough to reach out and touch as they are attracted by the torchlight. At one point our instructor signalled to kneel on the sea bed at about 7m depth and turned off all the torches. In the pitch black we could see thousands of tiny green flashes of light every time a hand or arm moved in the water - phosphorescence generated by the plankton. It was beautiful, then when the lights went on again we were surprised to see a little port jackson shark swimming right between us. It was about 50cm long and very cute, it came right up to me and did whatever the shark equivalent of sniffing is. At one point I saw a little octopus scuttling along the rocks on its tentacles. I hung upside down in the water column for a while just watching it.
The entire dive was an incredible experience, I can't wait for the next one.
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