If you are already an advanced-level diver, you have likely tried night diving. Until now, you may have only been day diving during your vacation. Your adventures have been only during the day. Koh Tao is a fantastic place to try night diving for the first time or add some trips to your Thailand dive holiday package. Everyone that tries night diving falls in love with the experience. It can be challenging to know what to expect at first, so we asked some of the staff and customers at our PADI 5-star dive center what they like most about night diving on Koh Tao. Keep reading to know their answers.
Fit more dives into the day
This is basic math! Adding night dives to your Koh Tao diving schedule allows you to log more during your stay. We run daily morning and afternoon dive sessions and night diving trips every other night. So when you have fun diving with us, you can dive 4-5 times daily.
Night diving on Koh Tao fits into a convenient schedule because sunset occurs early due to the short distance between the equator and Koh Tao. Diving at locations further from the equator means waiting until late in the evening to night dive, but here you can depart in the early evening and be back in time for dinner.
Gain more confidence and experience
Embracing any new scuba diving activity or expanding your current experience and skill level is always an advantage. Diving at night helps you become more comfortable in limited visibility and more adept at buoyancy control, and it can also help you work towards your following scuba diving qualification. A night adventure dive is one of the elective dives on the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course. Complete the night adventure dive plus four other adventure dives (including deep and navigation) with one of the fantastic instructors at our Koh Tao dive school, and you will get your certification. Even if you don't have time for the entire course, you should take a night adventure dive, as taking your first-night dive with an instructor is always recommended. You can always add more adventure dives at other locations as your Thailand diving holiday continues and build toward your advanced certification as you go. If you fall in love with night diving, you can complete the PADI Night Diver specialty course! PADI Night Diver is just one of the exciting PADI specialty courses available through our PADI 5-star dive center on Koh Tao.
What will you see during the night dive?
Everything changes at night underwater. The daytime fish go to sleep, and the nighttime hunters come out to play! As you cruise around any Koh Tao dive site at night, you'll be able to spot some of your colorful daytime favorites like parrot fish, butterfly-fish, and wrasse wedged into their sleeping spots within the reef. The casual daytime activities of these coral grazers are replaced by predators like great barracuda, darting around looking for their evening meal. You'll also see more action on the ocean floor as filter feeders like blue-spotted stingrays come out to feed. Puffer-fish and giant hermit crabs are also regularly spotted at night, and marine life, such as feather stars and squid, are predominantly only seen at night. When you first discover scuba diving, you tend to take in less detail on your dives. However, when you can only see by torchlight, you tend to notice all of the minor stuff, such as crabs and shrimps, and how the corals seem to soften as they come alive at night to feed.
Night dive is so colorful
Because of the refraction of light, colors do not appear as intense throughout the day as they do at night – something you'll have noticed if you've ever worn a red rash vest or wet-suit on your dives! However vibrant the coral reefs may look through the day, they look even more dazzling on a night dive! So when you add night diving to your scuba itinerary, be prepared to have your mind blown by some mesmerizing colors.
The night dive journey
Sign up for a night dive on Koh Tao, and you'll head out to the dive site in the early evening as the sun sets. Sunset boat rides are incredible, and you'll get a fantastic 360-degree view of the ocean and a unique viewpoint back toward Koh Tao as the last of the sun's rays kiss the shore. The return trip is just as impressive. When you ascend from a night dive, you'll be amazed by the night sky once you reach the surface. Away from the light pollution on land, you'll have a much clearer view of the stars as they shine out of the darkness. So sit back on the return journey, relax, and enjoy the light show!
Even more adventure awaits
Once you have your first-night diving adventures logged, you can do much more varied dives in the future. For example, if your Thailand dive holiday includes a diving cruise trip on the west coast and some diving on Koh Tao, the schedule will consist of some night diving. Some of the most impressive underwater sightings in the world can only be seen by diving at night. This includes seeing bio-luminescence and observing particular marine life behavior. So if you stick to day diving only, you're missing out! Speaking of luminescence and marine life behavior, have you ever heard of Ultraviolet (UV) diving or Fluoro diving? Koh Tao is one of the few places where this is available. So once you've got some experience of a regular night dive, you can switch your white torch for a UV one, and we'll show you a whole new world of underwater wonders as the reef glows under your torch beam!
We hope this has whetted (pun very much intended!) your appetite for night diving on Koh Tao. Please contact us for further details or information on including some night dives in your Koh Tao diving holiday package. We're always happy to help.
