As the boat leaves the dock, the motor starts to roar.
Madeline strides into the water just before dusk for her first ever night dive.
It’s almost sunset as we start to assemble our gear. The cool wind rushes on faces. We approach
The dark water sends shivers down our spines. As we look, we start to find many species of animals, particularly parrot fish. It is fully dark now.
The surge rocks us back and forth as we swim forwards. There are so many shells! We look under the ledges and find crabs and lobsters. We carefully pick them up and place them in special bags to go back to the research lab.
As we keep going, we spot a tralucent looking squid, we keep going. in the rocks, we find a bright green moray eel and many many squirrelfish.
The divemaster gives us the signal to surface; we make sure we have everyone together, and head for the top of the waves. We know we have reached the surface when our ears give a gentle pop, and our heads break the waves.
We slowly make our way towards the boat and grab ahold of the tag line. As the person Infront of me climbs the later. I start to unstrap my fins, it’s my turn to climb the latter, I grab the 1st rung, then the 2nd rung as I hoist myself up onto the boat and sit down on the bench. I take a deep breath of the salty ocean air as my tank clicks into place.
When the last diver is on the boat, the motor starts to rev and take off into the sunset. I loved this dive because we got to see how different the reef is at night and all the nocturnal animals.
My favorite part was looking under rocks and finding a baby moray eel! When we got back on the boat. I felt like it couldn’t get any better than this.
— Madeline S., Naut-in-Training, Crystal River Chapter
