Feedback from night dives in Raja Ampat by one of our Dive Master trainees :
Before coming to Soul Scuba divers I was doing very little night dives : only once in a while or if there was something specific to see like flashlight fishes in the SS President Coolidge in Vanuatu or night dive with sharks in the northern pass of Fakarava in French Polynesia. However, here I started to do more and more.
The first reason is that Annie, the manager of Soul Scuba divers, loves night dives and macro so she is brainwashing everybody into it. Since she arrived at Soul scuba she started to organize night dives every day but Saturday, starting from one person. With this politic, the number of night dives increased and some people are even doing it every night! Indeed, after I did my first night dive here, I just wanted to go back.
At night you can see of course the amazing corals that are very rich and healthy. You can also see their bioluminescence when the guide takes the UV light. During the day you’ll see countless schools of fishes. At night they are so many crabs, shrimps and nudibranches that it seems they want to compete with the fishes and gather as schools. You can also find cuttlefishes, octopuses and some others critters depending on the dive site.
Soul scuba divers goes to four main dive sites for night diving. The first one is at the Yenbuba Jetty where you’ll be amazed by the the cabbage coral field that is full of life. Another site is Soul scuba reef where you can also see a basket star and if you are lucky, Pygmy seahorses, a wobegong swimming, stargazers, poptail and harlequin shrimps. Yenkoranu is a similar dive site, full of fire coral that hides hydroid decorator crabs. Finally, Pasir Kolam is a site for macro lover. It literally means « sand pool ». You can encounter juvenile sweetlips, many types of nudibranches, shrimps and crabs hiding in the halimeda seaweed. There is also a net covering corals under which a walking shark is hiding. This area is so rich that you could spend the whole dive around it. Finally, at the end as you are swimming through the seaweed, look for diamond filefishes and green camouflage nudibranches.
So don’t wait and don’t waste your time in Raja Ampat staying dry! Try the night dives and get convinced by Annie’s enthusiasm!
