Once, long ago, I did a night dive under a full moon when the water and sky were so clear that my buddy and I (can’t remember who it was now, some instructor friend no doubt) did the whole dive without turning on our lights. It was bright enough to see where we were going and make out the mega-fauna and just chill under the wavering moonlight. And it was awesome. A bit spooky, but awesome.
I mentioned this to Daniel and Jenny, with whom I dove the other day, and they suggested we give it a shot. Full moon was August 1st. We tried to do the dive with no lights, and all of us at some point turned our lights off for varying lengths of time, but it was a bit too dark to see anything. Until the end of the dive anyway, so I think we went in too early; we need the moon to be a bit higher in the sky so the light best penetrates the water. So next time, I want to go in at around 11 :15 PM and dive until about 12:45 AM for maximum moonlight.
It was a great dive none-the-less; We had a long fun time observing an Ornate Octopus lurking around. I only shot video with the Insta360, which was not ideal. My idea was to shoot the no light night dive on 360 video, so I had it set to manual exposure expecting virtually no light. Some of it turned out, some good footage of the octopus anyway. Enjoy.
