Following a Glowstick at the Great Barrier Reef

On top of the 8 dives to complete our open water certification, we were offered an optional night dive. We were apprehensive at first - with only a few dives under our belt, it sounded scary to be diving in the complete dark. But all the other divers/staff that we talked to highly recommended it... just follow the glowstick!  So we thought.. since we're already here...

And we were so glad we did that dive. When we first jumped in, we were a bit disoriented cause it really was pitch black. But once we got our bearings, the dive was awesome. Sharks were out and about at night, so we saw a lot of them! Laura (divemaster and glowstick carrier) found a lobster and a turtle tucked away in the reef sleeping. Those were great to see... not so great for pictures though. I tried, but they were all either filled with backscatter or a blurred mess. I gave up after a few shots and went to video... here's a compilation of some of the sharks we saw.

You might by wondering why there're two red dots throughout the video. Found out later it's cause the CCD sensor in my camera was starting to go. So it's not just the videos... look closely at all my pictures and you can see the same issue - just that it's more pronounced against a black background. Pretty shitty cause this camera wasn't even that old... had it for maybe 2-3 years tops. Ah well... electronics these days...

Mike on the other hand was able to get a couple decent shots. You can see this fish swimming around the sharks in the video. Can't remember what fish they were, but they definitely weren't small...

Canon IXUS 130 - playing tag with the light from our torches

Turns out these fish got to be pretty smart, too. They learned to adapt to the night divers with their torches, and used the light to help them find food. If the light catches one of their prey, they'll quickly swoop in and devour it. That was the reason these were everywhere and kept circling the light. Kinda funny from our perspective, but really sucks for those little guys that just wanted to sleep.