BLOG

Not to be up-staged by the fairy lights and festive decorations on land at this time of year, marine creatures reveal their secret decorations to divers joining fluoro dives at Hurawalhi Maldives.

So, what is fluoro diving? It’s a night dive with a difference, using special equipment that enables divers to observe the fluorescence of the reef and creatures that inhabit it.

The phenomenon of fluorescence occurs when light of a shorter wavelength than that of visible light is absorbed, and a longer wavelength is then emitted. When on a fluoro dive, divers take a UV (or blue) light torch and wear a special yellow mask filter to stop them seeing the torchlight. When the UV light reaches an organism that has the ability to fluoresce the divers see only the emitted longer wave length light which is green, pink, purple, red, blue and yellow – all very vivid and psychedelic. Why creatures have evolved to fluoresce is not yet fully understood but its applications have started to be used to assess the health of coral reefs.

Scorpion fish, moral eels, shrimps, anemones, nudibranchs, and many types of corals fluorescently glow under the UV/blue light. The results are so magical it’s easy to see why this is the latest trend hitting the recreational diving industry.

Prodivers Hurawalhi has all the specialised equipment that divers need in order to experience this light show extravaganza on the reef. The reef usually visited for fluoro diving is the stunning Anemone Thila – as the name suggests, it is quite literally covered in anemones and they, along with the numerous critters that inhabit the reef, fluoresce.

Come along to the dive center and request a fluoro dive – experience for yourselves what this latest diving craze is all about.