One more dive in northern Costa Brava, Spain. This year we started the diving season with a night dive. We jumped to the water some time alter 9 p.m. when it was almost dark outside. On the way to the selected diving site we had to change our destination due to bad weather. Waves were slightly bigger than expected, so the skipper chose another place a bit more sheltered. It had to be easy. We stopped near a rocky coast so after descending along the anchor chain we would only have to swim a bit towards the coast and then just doing a coast dive leave the wall on one side. Maximum depth 10-11m, nothing really complicated for a night dive. But it wasn’t that easy. Right after descending we misled the way seeing only sand,  high grass and an occasional huge pen shell.

“Pinna nobilis” or pen shell. They are quite common in the area. Up to 1m long.

Only after a while and I don’t know exactly where, we found a rocky sea bed where there was some more life. For sure it was not where they told us to go because it was deeper, reaching 14-15m in some places. Still it was interesting there. A couple of octopuses, a moray eel waiting in his hole, little prawns and many brittle stars that during the day are deeply hidden in cracks. Little winkles behave in their usual way when they are caught by a bright beam of light. They hide immediately, falling to the ground if they were on a cave ceiling. The most remarkable fish we saw where several sleeping peacock wrasses. Who says that fish don’t sleep? Well, these ones do sleep. You find them motionless laying on one side and they move only when you can almost touch them. After forty or so minutes everybody started to feel cold. (Water temperature was only 13-14C) and without not knowing well where to go we decided to resurface. The boat was waiting for us something like 100 metres away that we had to cover swimming.

A very colourful “Symphodus tinca” or Peacock wrasse.