Deep Dive into Blackwater: Practical Techniques for the Dark

I don’t consider myself a blackwater expert, but I’ve spent dozens of nights floating in the Gulf Stream studying the people who I consider to be the best in the world. Over time, I’ve collected their tips, habits, and small tricks that separate the divers who return with amazing photos from the divers who drift around, seeing very little. Here, we will bring together some lesser-talked-about shooting strategies that work, night after night, so that you can return with the best possible photos after your evening spent outdoors.

The Basics

I am assuming a few baseline personal skills and items every blackwater diver should have before going for a drift in the open ocean. Given the huge number of gear articles and the tendency to oversell how much gear you need, I'm only going to go over the absolute basics to be a comfortable and confident diver on your drift, even if you aren't taking pictures. Every diver should have:

• Excellent buoyancy control: You will be scuba diving at night over hundreds or thousands of feet of water. Consider redundant buoyancy or proper weighing techniques to prevent a one-way trip to the midnight zone should your BC fail. 

• Narrow beam light: At least one narrow beam torch 1000+ lumens for searching for subjects, it should be capable of about 90 to 120 minutes of battery life, 15-degree or narrower beam will help cut down on glare from marine snow.

• Focus light: At least one focus light, any power, with white light and red light functions. Many animals react to either white or red light, and many operators prefer divers to use red lights to signal on the surface for pickup. 

• A hood: Similar to bloodworms on a reef, amphipods will swarm a light that's been left on too long. These amphipods will bite any bare skin if given the chance. Additionally, sometimes the water is thick with siphonophores and jellies that sting, a hood means the free botox is concentrated on your lips instead of stuck in your hair. 

Seeing the Unseeable

The most common question I get is: "How do you even find this stuff?" The honest answer is time, patience, and scanning with purpose. Most popular blackwater subjects are smaller than a dime, and many are translucent, reflective, or actively trying not to be seen. My routine is to let my eyes adjust to the dark, then slowly scan with my narrow beam search light for any shimmer, twitch, or geometric form that stands out from the marine snow. Often, you'll just find jellyfish, but if you’re just waving your light around hoping to spot something obvious, you’ll miss most of the mimics that pretend to be…jellyfish.

Start by picking a direction and holding your search light steady. I often run a box pattern, aimed roughly in the direction I want to drift. If you're aiming downward, you’ll find yourself dropping in the water column. Look upward, and you’ll rise. Staying level and deliberate gives your eyes a chance to catch the glint of an eye, a trailing filament, or the twitch of an appendage while managing your buoyancy in a black void.

Teamwork Makes the Dive Work

On blackwater dives, each diver operates individually within the large sphere of light produced by the downlight.  Treating the dive as a loose team of individuals helps everyone see the maximum number of subjects. If you see someone strobing away on some plankton, feel free to stay within visual range but out of each other’s personal space unless you’re invited in. The unwritten rules for sharing subjects are as follows:  If you find a subject, you get first dibs and can spend the time you need to get the picture you want. After that, it's good practice to offer it to others. If you are a lucky diver who gets called over for a subject, just take a couple of minutes or a few frames before passing it on so more divers get a turn. Divers who share tend to get more subjects handed to them in return. Those who don’t share or hog a subject usually get fewer call-overs as the night goes on. Working together this way increases the number of critters everyone sees, which is important in a 360-degree environment where every set of eyes matters.

Set Up Signaling Before You Splash

Hand signals rarely work on blackwater dives. Most people are holding cameras or lights, and you often can’t see their hands anyway. I usually tell the group before the dive that I use a green laser pointer when I want to show someone something. Others use rattles or inflator-hose honkers. As long as you agree on a signal ahead of time, you’re better off. Emergency signals are usually covered in the boat brief; one good rule of thumb is this: if everyone starts signaling all at once, it's worth taking a look around because something big like a swordfish or shark is probably swimming through the group. Knowing what to expect helps everyone stay calm and interpret signals quickly without second-guessing.

Knowing to look out for a green laser or a specific rattle means that someone is probably calling you over for a good subject, and you should take a look. 

Lighting: Tools, Behavior, and Strategy

Lighting is everything in blackwater photography. It affects how you find subjects, how you approach them, and whether you can capture them cleanly. Bring both red and white lights. Red is key for getting close to deep-sea migrators like dragonfish or anglers that spook at bright beams. Some animals seem indifferent to white light or even attracted to it, like pearlfish or some cusk eels. Others, specifically smart cephalopods, will vanish the moment they catch your silhouette lit by the float line.

Lighting also depends on what you’re shooting. I think of blackwater subjects in four groups: transparent, semi-transparent, reflective, and solid.

Transparent animals like radiolarians or larval jellies require more light just to become visible. I use diffusers to soften the light, with strobes placed behind the entrance of the lens, facing forward on full power. Using diffuse full power allows the light to bounce around inside your transparent subject and separate it from the inky black background.

Semi-transparent subjects, like larval cephalopods, benefit from lower strobe power combined with a bump in ISO. If your strobe is too harsh, you lose all the internal detail, or can blow out your highlights, so lighting them directly can destroy the shot. In those cases, I move the subject to an inward lighting angle, still behind my port, but at a 90-degree angle facing my camera, so I light the subject with just the outside rim of my strobes. If I find I’m still dumping too much light on the subject, I’ll move my strobes further back and away behind the port instead of fiddling with the power knobs.

Your focus light should be powerful enough to help you see clearly, but not so harsh that it sends everything fleeing. I default my focus lights to red mode because it disturbs the least amount of subjects, but I am merely a click away from flooding the area with white light in case my subject calls for it.

It is common for subjects to be “transfixed” by your lights and begin swimming towards the light, which means you’ll be backing up and won't have many options besides the popular “head-on” picture. In these cases, you can work with a buddy to hold out a light at an angle so the subject presents a different side to them, and I’ve seen photographers simply switch between red and white modes to cause animals like argonauts to rotate away or towards you.

Manual Focus vs Autofocus: Give Both a Try

With the obsession with ever-newer cameras and gear, it's easy for photographers to be discouraged that their older camera isn't enough for blackwater, but this isn't the case at all. For those of us with slightly older cameras, the autofocus modes don't always cut it when the subjects don’t have distinct eyes or contrast points. I use DMF (Direct Manual Focus) on my Sony system: it lets me tap the back-button autofocus, and then I refine focus by moving my camera forward or backward while looking at the focus peaking on my LCD. I often make small physical movements to adjust the focus plane instead of touching the dial again. This might sound slow, but when the subject’s barely moving, it works, and even old cameras can do it. 

Gas Management is Key to Time in the Water

Operators in my area typically offer 90- or 120-minute blackwater dives. Divers looking for full bottom time tend to bring the biggest tanks they can manage, usually steel 100s or HP 149s. The latter gives you more flexibility at depth but adds weight and bulk. Some divers opt to bring AL80s and switch tanks halfway, but that is unfavorable because it cuts into your water time. The biggest gas drain isn’t exertion. It’s going too deep and then staying at depth. Chasing something like a diamond squid to 70 feet (21 meters) and then cruising around at that depth will leave you surfacing early. 

Every evening, there is usually a depth that has all the life; some nights it's at 80–90 ft (24–27 meters), and some nights it's on the surface. The more experienced divers will drop deep early into the dive. This allows them to check the entire water column for which depth is “hot” for the evening. If they don’t find worthy subjects, they return to a more sustainable 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) to cruise and look up or down. 

If you stay too long on one subject, you may also drift far from the line and have to swim hard to catch up, burning more gas, shortening your dive. If you get separated, the captains are usually happy to pick you up after signaling them with a red light and re-dropping you with the group. 

Move Carefully or Lose the Shot

The animals we photograph are delicate. Sudden movement can throw them into turbulence that tangles their fins or causes them to drop filaments entirely. Sometimes they get caught in the slow-moving water just ahead of your housing, and a steady camera gets you the shot. But too much motion will ruin it.

Avoid swimming under other divers, too. Rising bubbles can scatter subjects just as easily. Good blackwater divers move slowly and deliberately. It protects the animal and improves your chances of getting the image you want. 

Share Your Finds

After the dive, I usually log some of my better photos on iNaturalist or post them to the Blackwater Photo Group on Facebook. These platforms help with identification, and the images sometimes end up helping scientists, too. Many of these creatures are only studied from damaged specimens caught in driftnets. Our photos show what they look like alive, suspended in the water column. It’s also a great way to contribute something back to the community.

Even if your ID isn’t perfect, posting clear images gives others the chance to help, and the collective knowledge grows with each post. These images are often the only clear look the scientific world gets at certain larval or deep-sea species. Every frame can have value beyond your memory card.

Final Note

Being prepared and understanding your environment, including how to interact with its unique animals, is crucial when it comes to blackwater diving. It's not only about having the right gear or the courage to dive; it's about exploring one of the most alien environments on our planet, far removed from where humans usually venture. During these dives, you'll encounter extraordinary creatures that are unimaginable on land, and hopefully, you'll be able to capture a few pictures to share your incredible experience.

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