Night Diving: The Secret is to NOT DIE

~Of the five dives I did in Okinawa, the final two were at night. I'd never been night diving before, so it was an entirely new experience for me. To be honest, I did not fully relish the idea of being forty feet underwater, relying on a small circle of light, while Poseidon knows what could be approaching me from all directions. I was fortunate that the night was clear and the moon was almost entirely full, so my rookie night dives were more exciting than they were frightening.

^ You might think that you'd be able to see less at night, but you can actually see more things underwater than you can during the day. This is because a dive light illuminates areas that are lost in the shadow during the day, revealing things you'd never notice on a day dive.

^ In addition, the lack of sunlight eliminates the blue-coloration of everything caused by ocean water splitting light. This means that everything I saw at night was in true color. My underwater camera case came with a "diffusion plate" that spread out the light from the flash; the nighttime photographs, you'll note, are much clearer than those I took underwater while the sun was up.

^ Say hello to Nemo and friends! These Ocellaris Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) were undoubtedly the most "kawaii" (cute) things I saw on my dives. Aside from being quite social, they were completely unafraid of me, letting me swim right up in their faces and take a picture.

^ I don't know if this eel is electric or not, but I wasn't about to take a chance finding out. I let him sleep where he was and kept a safe distance.

^ The coral made me think of huge, alien flowers permanently open on the ocean floor. This dinner-plate sized coral was lit in the ghostly light of the moon. I suppose I was wrong before when I said that the blue-light effect is absent at night; after all, moonlight is just reflected sunlight. When the clouds parted and the moonlight shone through, I didn't need to use the flash, but everything did look a bit blue.

^ When I was finished diving, the anchor had to be brought up. This wasn't simply a matter of hauling it up like on a pirate ship--the delicate coral reefs demand more respect than that. When the divemaster found a suitable site to dive, he'd jump in the water, grab the anchor, and manually secure it to a rock outcropping below. When it was time to leave, he had to remove it by hand...and in the strong currents, that's easier said than done.

That's it from Okinawa. The vacation was great, even though I didn't get much time to look around the island itself. I'm interesting in going back again in the future to check out the underwater pyramids of Yonaguni. Interested persons, please inquire. ~Oyasumi!