Black water diving – Invaluable tips for fun divers & photographers

Black water diving is a hit amongst experienced divers and especially photographers. What is so exciting, why do people get hooked and what do you need to know before your first black water dive? Award-winning underwater photographer Simon Lorenz shares with us everything you need to know about this incredible experience and how to take stunning images.

 

So what exactly is black water diving?


Black water diving is a night dive which focuses on life in the water column, ignoring the reefs around. The target of these dives are animals in larval or juvenile life stages, or permanently pelagic animals, meaning animals that never live on the reef. During these dives the variety of animal encounters is unreal and the diving sensation thrilling.

While you might find it slightly disorienting at first, as there is no surface or bottom to orient, you will soon get the hang of it. Divers swim around the light beam of the suspended flood lights searching for anything that moves. There is a sense of excitement of the “hunt” paired with the weightlessness of space.

Especially for seasoned photographers the richness of animals presented with automatic black canvas is immediately addictive. On one of my photo workshops in Anilao the divers got so crazed for the blackwater that we ended up diving twice every night, on top of our three 80-odd minute day dives, culminating in a colossal sleep deprivation for the photo coach. 

As a matter of fact, blackwater photography has become so popular that many photo awards now have categories for these types of photos.

 

Who is black water diving for?


“If your photo collection is looking a little dull or monotonous, you might consider sprucing it up with some glowing, planktivorous creatures against a clean black background” says Jeff Milisen, blackwater enthusiast and author of “A Field Guide to Blackwater Diving in Hawaii”.

Let’s be clear – Black water fans are almost always photographers. A lot of the animals that we encounter are small and will look great on the computer, but might look insignificant to the naked eye. That sense of hunt is exciting if you are a photographer. But, it is also massively challenging to get a good shot. The aim to get a better shot is a key motivator in this sport.

It also is not a sport if you are a beginner diver or a beginner photographer. You must have perfect buoyancy to hold your level in the water, otherwise you might uncontrollably sink into the abyss or bang your head on the dive boat. If you cannot sense your buoyancy with closed eyes (easy to test) you will have to be very focussed on these dives (and pay a divemaster to look after you).

Equally, as a beginner photographer you will find it hard to find focus, light the subject, avoid backscatter and I have met many beginners where frustration won over novelty. Equally, entry level cameras struggle with the concept altogether. Unless you have a system camera you will likely struggle (actually you struggle regardless).

 

What marine life can you see?


Photography targets are baby fish, crabs, shrimp, seahorses, octopus, and cuttlefish that have yet to settle on the reef. Most reef inhabitants start off in the water column, mostly camouflaged against predators by being transparent. Many have other bizarre mutations to make them harder to prey on.

But there are also animals that permanently live in the water column, we call them pelagic. Many fish are pelagic as well as some squid, octopi like the paper nautilus and even frogfish that surf the oceans on sargassum weeds. There are also brainless beings like jellyfish and weird alien looking critters. I once came across a 15m long snake-like looking thing that turned out to be a pyrosome, a colony of simple life forms that can grow up to 40m (!) in length. Takes a while for your brain to process that you didn’t just encounter a giant monster in the middle of the dark ocean…

Another popular subject are hitchhikers. Juvenile stage crabs, octopi and fish like to hitch a ride on jellyfish as well as seek protection. Almost every jellyfish or pyrosome has a hitchhiker which makes for a great photo subject, or two subjects rather, which is a great variation to the usual single subject format of blackwater photos. 

You also have to expect the unexpected. And, as it turns out, expect some things much bigger than your macro lens can handle. Jeff Milison has met oceanic white tip sharks, cookie cutter sharks and even swordfish. On one of my dives with Jeff over 5000m of water we had dolphins hunting squid all around us. And on a blackwater bonfire in Palau we had a tuna pound through our bonfires like on steroids.

 

What to expect and how black water diving works


A rope with several lights is lowered into the water. Divers swim all around it looking for animals that get attracted to the light. Or animals that hunt those that get attracted to the light. Often the music is outside the light beams which then just function as an orientation beacon. Every diver has a torch, preferably a far reaching spot beam torch, and searches all around for things. It pays off to do the lightsaber approach. Shine above, below and on eye-level, like in an engaged fight on a starship, and only stop when something catches the light. Golden rule, inspect anything, ever so tiny. 

Two common things that happen are people drifting too deep or too far from the lights. The former is more dangerous, which is why I always advise to set a depth alarm at 25m. Drifting off is easy to fix, just darken your torch and look for the brighter areas.

When blackwater was first designed people were tethered to ropes. Weighted lines hung down around the boat and people were locked onto those by carbiner-topped tethers. I am not a big fan of that because as soon as you want to swim towards something you start creating the world’s biggest spaghetti. Another problem with lines that are suspended from the boat is that the boat acts as a sail, pulling the tethers sideways. So these days we just dive freely around the lights. But this requires to be responsible and focussed and not get lost at sea. Although even that isn’t such a big problem. You surface and light the SMB (which every responsible diver should always carry) with a torch to get noticed by the boat. But better be focused and not lose the black water dive ground.

 

Check out this video tutorial!

 

 

Black water diving VS Bonfire diving


For me there is REAL black water diving and bonfire. I have yet to have a bonfire that delivers anything comparable to a dive over depth. But it is easier and safer to set up, so it should not be fully discredited. Since you always see the bottom it is certainly less exciting.

The way blackwater diving was developed in Hawaii was by suspending ropes under the dive boat with a trapeze with lights. I have seen many solutions but essentially you want to have several lights at 10m and 20m and maybe one at the surface. Over the years many operators have started suspending the lights under floats rather than the boat, as the boat acts as a sail and pulls the rope. Also, like this the boat can pick up stragglers that didn’t read the earlier paragraph. Sometimes we put two floats around 20m apart to create a bigger playground.

Bonfire is when lights are placed on the reef pointing up into the water column. In my experience it attracts a lot of krill and reef animals, but sometimes interesting things do occur. Instead of bonfire I often just swim above the reef in the water column on a regular night dive. You can find very interesting things like that.

 

How to prepare for black water diving? Planning the dive


In most places the best results are achieved during new moon (in Hawaii it seems to be independent from the moon). Animals seem to rise more from the shallows plus the moon does not compete for light attraction. Perfect condition is a mild current over 50m or deeper water. The divers should be slightly drifting with the lights. In Palau and Hawaii dives are conducted over 5000m and deeper water.

Time the dive to be before and after slack tides to avoid having to fin hard. If there is no current at all it also usually means zero stuff to photograph.

 

Diving techniques – what to do and what not to do
?

Number one is buoyancy. Make sure you get that sorted before you even start looking for things. If you notice yourself drifting up or down, make sure to keep your lit up dive computer on your wrist pointing at you and check your depth. I always recommend setting a depth alarm at 25m. 

You should know your gear. No different from any night dive, don’t try out a new mask or BCD on a dive like this.

Same applies with your camera. If you are not sure yet how to change ISO and aperture and adjust your strobes blindly, it might be a bit early for you to take such photos. 

Finally, bring lights and preferably different ones. Some animals shy away from strong lights, others come to them. I always have at least two torches with different settings (see below).

 

Photography tips for black water diving


Before you even look for subjects, get your settings right with test shots. I always practise on the tip of my finger, adjusting strength and angle of light to make sure my finger is slightly overexposed (different to my fingers, subjects are transparent, so light travels through them). But make sure that the background looks dark and that there is no light “halo” around your finger. This is an indicator for too strong light and too sensitive settings. 

Decide on a distance that is good for your camera-lens combination and set the focus light so that it illuminates this spot. You will always want to shoot the same distance. I like to use a spot light torch rather than wide-beam focus lights to achieve this. Once the subject is in the beam – boom you can shoot. Some people chose to turn off the auto-focus at this stage. More on this below.

Have your torch dangling on your D-rings so once you have spotted something you can just drop it. I keep them short so they don’t dangle much.

 

What lens and camera do you need? Compact VS system cameras


Here is another spoiler alert – compact cameras are hard pressed to get any photos. The focus detection has real trouble with small transparent things amongst tons of backscatter. GoPros and action cameras are absolutely pointless as this is a macro game.

Older mirrorless also have slow contrast based autofocus which can make the whole thing frustrating. In this case – pick your battles and focus on larger subjects. Another concept is to film instead of photo, but be prepared to cut a lot of out-of-focus content later.

The best are rapidly focussing DSLR and newer mirrorless cameras with the phase-detecting sensors. With my Nikon D500 it is a real joy to shoot subjects in the dark. You will also see that most regular blackwater photographers will use crop sensor cameras, as they generally perform better in macro due to their magnification but have more depth of field. And in our constant battle with backscatter the full frame will detect even more particles than a smaller sensor.

The absolute favourite lenses are the 60mm ones, over 90, 100 or 105mm. They are generally faster, allow a closer focussing distance and have more depth of field. 

 

Lights, strobes, exposure – camera settings and strobe position


The battle with backscatter is a key element of black water. That is why test shooting is so important. Strobes should always be placed behind the lens port. They can be set to shoot forward or even slightly outwards. In case of very clear water it can be inward.

I suggest to start with a medium aperture because too small aperture means too sharp background, i.e. backscatter, while a too wide aperture leads to out-of-focus areas. Shutter speed can be slower, say 1/100, which can help reduce backscatter visibly – slow shutter is also a possible variation.

Spot lights are important. Many experienced black water divers will have several spot and focus lights. I tend to have a spot light pointing at my focus area and a second light that can mix in red light. Some animals are in fact scared of your lights and not of red light, but try focussing with only red light. So I mix the lights in that case. If they are still not happy I turn off the spot light, but focussing in red light only works on reasonably large subjects, 3cm and bigger.

 

How do you focus on the critters?


The question of all questions – the biggest challenge of the sport. There are several strategies!

Set your camera to center focus with the smallest possible area. Personally, I prefer single autofocus, because then I know when autofocus is locked.  I also like to use thumb focus which means the focus and the shutter are on two different buttons (not all housings support this). The advantage is that you can just play with holding my focus and shoot anytime.

Some people use continuous autofocus though I find that difficult. Full manual is another option, in which case you would move the camera forwards and backwards until the subject is in focus. 

Remember that you can crop the black canvas in any form afterwards, so just get the subject somehow in the frame and do not worry about framing it properly.

If your lens tends to zoom to infinity and back, losing precious time, I suggest limiting the focussing range of your lens if that is possible. Another trick can be to shoot with manual focus, meaning you turn off the focus once you have your sweet spot distance and sharpen as above by moving the camera. Warning: this is very tiring and not all housings allow it.

 


Struggles and tips


Aside from the mentioned focussing trouble is the backscatter, make sure to keep the strobes behind the lens of your camera. Another trick can be to remove diffusers altogether creating more direct and less diffused light. INON actually offers a special blackwater diffuser that reduces the intensity of the light on the strobes. 

If you normally use angled viewfinders for your macro photography I suggest removing those for blackwater. It is hard enough to find the subject with your camera, with 45 degrees it is even harder. I usually don’t have my mask glued to the viewfinder. I rather aim through the viewfinder at a 5cm distance. If you are shooting mirroless, use the monitor rather than the viewfinder. Just make sure you reduce the screen brightness slightly so your eyes don’t have trouble adjusting to the dark.

Another tip is to mount a backlit dive computer on your camera so you can always see it. Personally I dive with the Shearwater Perdix that is always nicely lit up.

Finally, I suggest diving with a snorkel. Yes you read it correctly. Why? Because if we find subjects close to the surface, our bubbles ripple the reflection. And I can tell you that it is hard as hell to focus close to the surface already, so you cannot hold your breath forever.

 

Best places for black water diving

The mother of all blackwater diving is in Hawaii, especially from Kona on the Big Island. 

Palau is another famous place where you can dive over the second deepest spot in the ocean – the Palau Trench. 

West Palm Beach in Florida has also proven a bountiful area for black water divers.

The coral triangle in Asia has several hotspots like Anilao in the Philippines and Lembeh in Indonesia. But in my opinion you can probably do a blackwater dive anywhere in the world. On most of my group trips we try to do at least one black water dive and sometimes you get lucky. My best blackwater dive ever was somewhere in the south of Raja Ampat in 75m of water. A photo that I took there of a juvenile Wunderpus Octopus got me the award of German Photographer of the Year 2019 (also the cover photo of this blog post).

 

About the author

Underwater photographer Simon Lorenz is a tour leader, scuba instructor, photo coach, author and event speaker. His travel company Insider Divers offers guided group trips in which he and his colleagues aim to further the marine and photography skills of the guests. His photos and articles have appeared in magazines around the world and he has filmed for companies such as CNN and NatGeo. Simon supports various NGOs such as WWF and TNC and fights for the protection of sharks on the advisory board of the Hong Kong Shark Foundation. He speaks 6 languages and has dived on all continents.

If you want to improve your photography Simon offers 1-on-1 coaching on various topics. For anyone interested he offers a FREE 30min coaching session where you can discuss your portfolio or equipment needs.

You can find more of Simon’s stunning images on his wabsite, Instagram page, Facebook profile and YouTube channel.