Night Dive in Timor

If you’ve never experienced a night dive, you are missing out on a whole other amazing side of diving!! Maybe you’ve heard your instructor or friends talking about night dives and thought, “But it’s DARK!”. This is a good and true observation, but don’t count out a night dive just because it seems weird to be in the ocean in the dark. Let’s talk a little more about night dives in Timor-Leste.

Night Dive- Some general information

Night dives obviously happen at night, but we will generally leave early enough to get to our destination (a local dive site) with the sun still setting so we can see clearly while getting our gear set up. 

Everyone will have a torch (flashlight). We encourage our divers to have a personal torch, but if you don’t have one, we are happy to provide a rental. Our guides will always carry a primary and backup light so there will never be a shortage of torches.

Friendly reminders. Whether this is your first night dive or you are a veteran, we will always give a dive briefing with some extra reminders about communicating with torches and other various night dive etiquettes.

Why night dives in Timor are awesome

Diving is like entering a whole other world. And night diving explores a side of that world hidden during the day time. Here in Timor-Leste, we have a huge amount of biodiversity. On any dive you will see hundreds of species of fish, corals and other marine life. However, there are many amazing animals that simply cannot be found during the day. Cockatoo waspfish, pygmy squid, and bobtail squid for instance, are nocturnal animals, meaning they are active and hunting at night. Many species of nudibranchs and pleurobranchs can also be found. And don’t forget about our other cephalopod friends! Reef, coconut, hairy and long arm octopus have all been spotted during night dives in Timor! With your torch to light the way, you will soon find yourself so focused on finding the next cool critter that you won’t notice the darkness at all.

What is the coolest part of a night dive? You’ll have to join us to find out for yourself, but here are some of our favorite highlights.

All those cool critters! It might seem obvious, but we really do love searching for all the different animals we rarely or never see during the daytime.

Bioluminescent. Within the water column there are many different tiny larvae, phytoplankton, and zooplanktons. These are all essentially teeny tiny organisms living and growing in the sea. One group known as dinoflagellates have a particularly interesting way of communicating. When disturbed in the water column, by movement from a fish, wave or diver, they will communicate a potential threat to other zooplankton nearby with a glowing formed from bioluminescence. This illumination acts to deter the predators since they become more visible and exposed to other animals that may harm them. As night divers, we find this phenomenon beautiful and mesmerizing. The effect looks like blue stars twinkling before your eyes!

And speaking of stars. After an epic dive nothing beats surfacing to a clear, quiet night sky filled with beautiful stars. With such little light pollution, stargazing in Timor-Leste is as wimple as looking up at the night sky

Want to book a night dive: Contact us –