Night Dive

Being a bit claustrophobic, I quite honestly didn't enjoy the last time I did a night dive. All we saw was plankton- not ideal for keeping your  mind off the surrounding darkness!

On Koh Tao, I decided to give it another go. I had met the people who were going and they seemed keen and were all Advanced divers, so 6 pm we met up and headed out into the sunset.

The pre-dive briefing included the usual the plan for and how long we would be down there, where we would go, that we would be going through a swim through-mentioned as if it shouldn´t bother anyone being in a confined space with rock over your head! Ángel (a reassuring name for our dive leader, I reckoned) also told us to keep our torches on at all times and demonstrated how he would ask for our air reading plus if we were ok. For safety, he said not to join another dive group while down there, if we got lost, to wait one minute, then surface, and to let him know if our air reached 70 bar. He finished off telling us what fish we should see and there were loads, so I felt encouraged.

“Any questions?” he asked .

“Yes- do I have to do the swim-through?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” was his response.

“Because I don’t often like them during the day, net alone at night!” I explained.

“Okay. You will now be in buddy group one, I will ask you if you are happy to go through and if you don’t want to, you can swim round.”

“Thanks. And how much will we see as in how far?”

“You will see everything,” he assured me.

“That's good,” I said, reassured, and off we went.

What I should have asked is, ‘What colour are your fins and how will I recognize you under the water?’! I had yellow fins and Simon had a yellow and black top, but Chad, my dive buddy, and Ángel were all in black. 

All was fine; you could see quite well with a decent torch (not that mine was, but some of the others were). But then we came across another group of divers looking at something; I stopped to see and the rest of our group did too, but before I knew it, they disappeared.

“Don’t join another dive group!” rang in my ears- that was exactly what I had done! “Now what?” I asked myself, trying not to panic.

"Ok, breathe calmly," I told myself, "if I don’t spot them, I wait for 1 minute and they will find me." After what felt like an age, I saw my buddy. Phew! Next job, to find the others, but how on earth was I to communicate under water in the dark?! I tried shrugging my shoulders and indicating puzzled with my hands- then signaling to the left and right to show I didn’t know where the rest of our group was. He didn’t seem to have a clue what I was on about. Maybe he thought the other group was our group! So I started off towards where I thought they had gone and motioned to him to come.   

He did, though he didn’t seem to be in any kind of a hurry. When I located the others, the Divemaster started counting us (shouldn’t he have done that before he set off?). Chad didn't appear at first but then I spotted him above me. The group 1 idea had by now gone to pot though, so when we came to the swim through I couldn’t work out how to go round and be sure not to lose people, so I went for it. I've no idea what was in there- I was more concerned about trying not to bash my tank along the roof nor have me stomach on the bottom and basically get out of there! There was a seahorse to be seen as we came out though which made it worthwhile. 

I really enjoyed the rest of the dive. We even had a squid put on a dance for us as Ángel shone his light on it, saw several sting rays (I tried not to think too long about Steve Irwin getting killed by one), a giant hermit crab and lots of fish.

I would definitely do it again, but think I would by something fluorescent for the person leading the group to wear and give it as a present before we set off!