Night snorkel

A tiny sliver of moon hung in the southwest sky as we walked down the beach. The last of the setting sun was hidden behind a low cloud bank on the horizon. Still, there was still plenty of light to see our way.

We slipped into the surprisingly cool ocean, put on masks, snorkels and fins and headed across the sand-bottom pool to the reef. In the not-quite-dark we didn't turn on our dive lights, preferring to see at what might be there in the dusk, things that the sudden bright light might scare away.

The reef, so familiar in the daylight, is a completely different world at night. Different creatures are out and familiar creatures behave differently. Sea urchins move across the reef rather than anchoring like barnacles in crevices in the coral. Ocean surgeonfish and blue tang, disturbed from their sleep, dart away from the light, faster than we ever see them swim in the daylight.

The reef itself looks different, brought in to sharp relief of light and shadow by the small, highly directional dive lights. Familiar coral formations look radically different and totally unfamiliar. Because our visibility is limited to the range of our dive lights, we tend to look at the underwater world in micro rather than macro. We shine our lights into cracks and holes and crevices in the reef that we might not even notice in daylight. Brittle starfishes and octopuses are more visible in their holes at night because colors show differently, brighter, under the artificial light of the dive lights.

We don't get to night snorkel often but we love it when we do. The July full moon is on the 15th (Saturday when Ola Lola's is open) so it will be nearly full on the 14th (Thursday) and the 18th (Tuesday). Hopefully the skies will be clear and we can get in the water then.