Black Water Diving

This summer I completed my first deep water night dive in Kona, Hawaii and it was quite an experience.

Every night the single greatest mass migration on Earth occurs in the deep ocean. A trillion creatures migrate from the deep ocean up towards the surface. These creatures include jellies, mollusks, crustaceans, fish, and other invertebrates. During the day they stay down in the deep water to avoid predators but during the night they move to shallow water to feed.

 The dive itself was pretty intimidating.  Around twilight we boarded the dive boat and headed out into the deep ocean. In Kona, Hawaii, where I was visiting, this meant traveling about five miles offshore. The ocean depth here is about 6000 feet deep. The boat can’t anchor, so the crew deployed a large drag parachute for stability. They then dropped fixed lines of the side of the boat. I jumped in the water and then clipped to one of the lines and descended to about 50 feet. I then waited alone in darkness for the show to begin.

 After a few minutes creatures begin to appear. They were like nothing I have ever seen before. The first thing to appear were the squid. They darted around pursuing prey. One of them smacked into my leg and angrily inked toward me. Next, small worm-like creatures appeared. These actually aren’t individual creatures at all but groups of small Siphonophorae that join together in long strings to hunt. Forming these strings allows them to move faster.

 Next, a whole array of translucent creatures in all shapes and forms appeared. These were mostly different forms of jellies. Some looked like hollow tubes. Some looked like aliens. Others looked like pancakes. All of them were very reflective and showed a rainbow of colors underwater. These flash and pulse across the bodies creating an amazing light show. These creatures became so thick around me that, at times, I couldn’t even see past them.

 As I hung there, I started to go into a zen-like state. I forgot that I was suspended from a boat in the middle of the dark, bottomless ocean and just stared at the show. Thousands of creatures floated past, lights flashing, each one stranger that the last.

 Finally, I saw one of the most elusive creatures of all, a Fisher’s seahorse. This is one of the few seahorses in the world that live in open ocean and it exists only near Kona. These orange seahorses are about an inch long and migrate to the surface with the other creatures each night. They don’t reflect light like the other creatures, so are very hard to find. Another diver suddenly started flashing his light right in front of me. When I looked carefully at the spot with my light, I suddenly saw the seahorse hanging there. He hung right by me for about a minute before swimming away.

 I practiced my underwater photography skills on this dive, trying to capture all of the amazing, elusive creatures. It was tough though.  It is so dark in the open ocean that you really need powerful strobes to get good photos. The small flash that I had wasn’t really sufficient. The creatures are also quite small in most cases. With a macro lens and low light, plus with the speed at which some of the creatures moved, it was difficult to focus clearly. I did get a few photos to remind me of the dive.

 Because you aren’t swimming and the depth is relatively shallow, my air lasted a long time. After about 80 minutes underwater, I finally ascending up the line and back on to the boat. All of the divers were so excited, describing all of the creatures that they had seen. I settled into the darkness of the boat as we headed back to the dock, letting it all sink in.

 I was glad that I did the deep water dive. Although it was a little overwhelming at first, the experience was amazing – different from anything I had ever done before and I was able to see a phenomena that very few people ever get to see.