Night Dive

Indescribable Night Dive at Island CYPRUS

Words cannot describe how beautiful our full moon night dives are.  As the sun sets, the vibrant colours of daylight dives are reduced to an eerily calm darkness.  The ocean’s colourful fish disappear and in their place nocturnal creatures start to wake up and emerge from their hiding places. Morey eels come out of their holes and start the hunt, and can be seen swimming freely out in the open at night – it is a truly awesome sight.  Octopus also come out to play, and a night dive is your best chance to experience a close encounter with one of these beautiful creatures.

Visibility at night can be vastly impaired, with just the diver’s torches illuminating the dive site in narrow beams of light. However – when you dive during a full moon this is not the case. Earth’s bright satellite reflects light into the water providing illumination beneath the waves. We love to turn off our torches and allow our eyes to adjust, the dive site now looks like the negative of a photograph and it transforms your whole experience.

But wait. What’s that?

As you make trails with your hands you notice that the water has a certain glow to it; an after image for your negative. What is it? Plankton of course – bioluminescent plankton or phytoplankton to you marine biologists out there.  Invisible in daylight hours, these lights are caused by your movements which disturb micro-organisms called dinoflagellates – their cell membranes respond to electrical signals which allow them to create this unique illumination. The light is produced by two devilishly named twins – a pigment called luciferin and an enzyme called luciferase. Luciferin reacts with oxygen and the luciferase spreads up the reaction. Moving the water around you causes the oxygen molecules to stimulate this reaction – and the more you move the more it glows. I have spent many a night dive barely moving – just playing with natures floating fireworks display.

The night diver specialty is even better – so if you truly want to experience the Cyprus night dives do it now!