I had been waiting for this for ages: my first night dive. Listen: doesn’t the night transform things? A quick wander outside, a spot of sky-staring, even a casual glance out the window at the dark horizon becomes a thing of intrigue. Tall buildings picked out with those gorgeous red lights on the corners, trees rendered as cavernous congregations of clasping branches. And underwater? Underwater at night? What would that be like?
So, while I had legitimate in-game reasons to want to go diving at night – a customer back at the restaurant wanted moray eel for a dish that would deliver a spicy blast of nostalgia, and morays only appear once the sun has gone away – really, I just wanted to get into the sea to understand what it was like at night down here. How would the landscape, already ever-changing, already filled with bright mysteries, be transformed yet again?
In the end, my first night dive took place during a storm. I had been told I might get more than the moray eel during a storm – there might be an underwater vortex with a dangerous secret inside. Down, under the surface I went. The reefs I thought I would recognise were suddenly new again, their edges picked out in cyberpunk neon. Bioluminescence! Meanwhile, rain hitting the surface of the water above me formed a shifting repetitive ripple of disturbed water, corrugating, corduroying the surface: sea, but with a likeness of undulatus cloud. There was a feeling, suddenly very strong, that I was at the centre of everything.
