Duane Night Dive 120fsw
 Key Largo Saturday Sep 22, 2001
I had been diving off Miami beach in the afternoon and I needed to hurry so I sped down to key largo grabbing a (very nasty) sandwich at the gas station on my way down, and arrived there almost 10 minutes early !! There were about 10 people on the boat so it was quite busy. especially since lots of people brought doubles and stages... This was a single dive so at least there wasn't a second tank for each diver taking up space. We put together as much of our gear as possible on the dock and then sped out in complete darkness except for the moonlight, to the Duane... Putting together the rest of my gear by feel in the dark was quite an exercise, but great practice for Zero Visibility  :-/.   The funny part was, that everything worked and was in place, contrary to my broad daylight afternoon experience.

The Duane was magnificent at night.. and with ZERO current. I was a little nervous about being able to see the down line, but I needn't have been it was easy. I dropped like a rock, and the Duane suddenly appeared out of the blackness way too fast and I had to apply the brakes pretty quickly LOL!  We were the last on the wreck so I didn't see any sharks lurking (or maybe they were and I couldn't see them).. The guys on the boat told me there was a "Giant Calamari" too but I didn't see that either, I wonder why??

I was vastly out-experienced on this dive, and I spent lots of the time simply watching the other divers, being impressed, and learning a great deal. It was as if the whole wreck was having a party as the bright HID lights wound their way in and out of the superstructure. As I was passing through one of the rooms. I watched one dive team. Within seconds they, dropped off stages, set a line and disappeared into a tiny hole in the floor. "Now that's how it's done" I thought to myself. The night life was really cool, I kept coming across giant parrotfish sleeping inside lockers in the wreck.  I think lots of the fish were pretty fed up with us for waking them.   Sadly after about 30 minutes my time ran out and I had to ascend, BUT the deco was really fun anyway.. I managed to gain a pet squid on the way up who hung out with me for almost the whole ascent, hovering in my light beam, sometimes no more than 5 inches from my outstretched hand. From time to time I flashed my light around to see what was lurking in the darkness and found the ever present shoals of barracuda hanging out just beyond the light beams. Then I became worried about my pet squid, since I was illuminating him brightly and I was thinking, now those barracuda could see him and might want a snack, so I quit that right away.  I spent the last part of the dive with my hand over my light just enjoying the bioluminescence of the plankton.

All I can say is that I had a treat.. both in terms of a spectacular dive and learning from people more experienced than I.   I want to go back and do it again  :-).

Epilogue: I had been in so much of a hurry to drive down there I forgot to get cash and just before I got on the turnpike I realized.. Oops no Toll money. So I had to go on US1 but I found it was closed down and covered with lots of cops so I wound up far away and got lost in my own neighborhood!! Yikes. In short I got home at about 1:30am!!!