Night Diving

light

Unlike ( or just like ) the Caribbean, diving in New Jersey is actually better at night in many ways. That's obviously not true if you are out to survey a shipwreck, but for inlet diving, there is no comparison. During the day, the day critters will be wide awake, and you won't be able to get near them, while the night critters will be down in their holes where you'll never see them.

At night, you can go right up to the sleeping day critters and pinch them, even the fish. Some even seem mesmerized by your light, which will also draw in many small invertebrates by itself. Meanwhile, the night critters will be out prowling around, including the king of all night critters, the lobster. And if you shut off the light and wave your hands vigorously, the bioluminescents will put on a show for you.

Actually, if you go down deep enough at sea, the difference between day and night becomes less pronounced as the surface light is filtered out by the somewhat-less-than-perfectly-clear Atlantic water. Basically, any time that the sun is not shining brightly high overhead is going to be nighttime on the bottom. For this reason, you should always carry a light, day or night.


schooner barge
A beached schooner barge. Compare the hull form with a square barge.

The schooner barge was the final development of the working sailing ship. The design originally evolved in the 1870s on the Great Lakes, where it was found that sailing ships could be more profitably towed from place to place than sailed. No longer subject to the vagaries of the wind, such trips could be made on a scheduled basis, and with reduced labor costs. The idea spread into general use, resulting in the conversion of many sailing ships into barges. Ironically, most of the vessels that were converted to schooner barges were not actually schooners, but square-rigged ships. Square-riggers, with their large and expensive crews of skilled sailors, became uneconomical to operate in the face of ever-improving steam power, while more efficient schooners managed to compete for a few years longer.