Dive Report : Divewise House Reef Night Dive

Location:

The house reef is through a gate about 30 yards from Divewise.
 

Dive Team

Neville (Guide), TBD, TBD and Chris Armstrong.

Dive log:

I had always imagined Malta to have seas that are teaming with life and I wasn’t disappointed by the past four days of diving, so I had always expresed an interest to do a night dive. I figured that the beautiful wildlife I see during the day would be supported by the beautiful wildlife at night.

I was diving with an instructor “Nev” and he was taking two Dutch students on their Night Adventure Dives. The weather today had completely changed compared to the last few days, but by this time it was quite reasonable. The swell on Divewise’s side of the bay was still quite significant so we walked across the road, and through the pool area of the Dragonara Hotel. Unfortunately it is 8pm so no fine young ladies laying at the poolside to be impressed by these four fine men hunking dive gear past them. Well, three fine men and one idiot in a twinset!

I must admit, I had some reservations with this dive – but for no real reasons. I had two main ones, firstly I had done two “big” dives earlier in the day on the Rozi and the P29 (dives with 60 minute run times with a max depth of about 35m each) so I was slightly weary of adding a third dive which would be very shallow (basically I was thinking that I would bend myself because the off-gassing I am currently going through wuold be forced back into solution in my body, pass around through my lungs and then come out of solution where they shouldn’t!)

My second reservation was that I was getting cold. Again, the diving I had earlier today were long dives and had sapped heat out of me. I didn’t feel cold at the time, and even during the surface interval where we got absoluted poured on I still didn’t feel cold.

But when I put on my wet wetsuit again, that was when I started to feel chilled. With these reasons bouncing in my head I was ummming and ahhhing. I also thought, bugger it, I can save 30 euros too! I decided sod it, lets go for it, I’ll do an ultra slow ascent at the end and keep relaxed.

Jumping in actually got me warmed up for a while!

Nev was using what looked like a Greenforce lamp, I’ve seen those in the past and they are reasonably impressive, ideal for a night dive because they tend to illuminate large areas (also good for video too). I was very interested to see how it would compare to my HID 21W (I was hoping privately to put it to shame! Who doesn’t want the brightest light?). Just before we descended the two Dutch divers asked me if I was going to turn my light on, I said that I would once we were down so that I knew the light head would have lots of water around it. Now my battery burns for about 4-5 hours, but its been funny with me recently, once the battery is down to about 50%, it starts being an awkward and won’t light. So I’d given it a quick charge at Techwise and crossed my fingers when I reached back to flick the canister light switch ….. OK here we go, tilting the lamp to be pointing to wards me so that I could see if the spark caught .. and flick, the spark flew and took! Bang, now its time to light this sea up!

30 seconds later, the bulb is at full temperature and 21W of HID goodness is flooding the sea!

Ned firstly did some basic navigation with the Dutch, I had to hold position while they swam out and back, after that Ned took us on a nice long tour of the reef.

There wasn’t that much to see. The highlight was certainly finding a very stupid Moray Eel. Why was it stupid? Well it was sat there with its mouth open .. and a fish was dancing in and out of it – it didn’t bite. The fish then swam off and a new one came along, again it was dancing in and out of its mouth.Now I did think maybe it’s a parasitic animal that is cleaning the Moray. But it wasn’t. So the fish starts to leave the mouth of the Moray, get a bit clear THEN the Moray decides to go for it, that lucky fish was saved by mere millimetres! Ned and I sounded like a football stadium when a shot misses the goal with an almighty “ohhhhhhhhh!”

I was still on the hunt for an elusive octopus and still haven’t found one which is a bit disappointing, but still very happy end to my holiday of diving!

We spent about an hour in the water floating around. If it is your first night dive then it is interesting and worth doing, after the climax of diving the P29, nothing could compare.