I intended to do a black water dive last year when I was in Florida and it just never happened. Luckily this time around I managed to get out for one. If you’re unfamiliar, black water diving is when you head out to deep water at night and look for the tiny little critters that migrate up from the depths each night. Usually they put some bright lights in the water to attract some critters – though others are afraid of the light, so during the dive you switch off from being near the light to drifting away from it. Our particular dive we went about 3-5 miles off shore from Riviera Beach, Florida out to the Gulf Stream and then we drifted about 7 miles over the course of a 90 minute dive in waters that are around 700 feet deep. I got to see tons of stuff but the photography is a way bigger challenge so I only came away with a small handful of passable images. Enjoy….
The first two are something called a salp. Then there is a (somewhat blurry) juvenile flouder. After that is a jelly of some sort with what might be a paralarval squid. Then a juvenile jack with some sargassum. And then finally some more jellies (I can’t tell if that last one is two separate jellies or somehow they are attached).
