Quick Details
Certified Diver
$ 299
The Most Adventurous Dive Experience on Earth
Floating tethered in complete darkness miles offshore, you’ll witness an alien world that rises from the ocean depths each night. This single-tank pelagic adventure transforms advanced divers into underwater astronauts, suspended in liquid space while bizarre creatures emerge from the midnight Pacific.
Entering the Midnight Zone
Your boat motors 2–3 miles from Kona’s coastline. Civilization fades until only stars show in the Pacific’s night sky. The transition from familiar reef diving to open ocean exploration feels like stepping through a portal into another dimension. Your dive light becomes the only beacon in the void.
The descent to 50 feet happens differently with no coral formations or sandy bottom guiding your way down. Follow the ethereal glow of your light disappearing into infinite blue-black water. Your breathing sounds amplified in the liquid silence, each exhale releasing silver bubbles that vanish upward toward the distant moonlight.
Nature’s Nightly Migration Spectacle
Microscopic zooplankton swarm toward your lights like underwater snowflakes, creating clouds of living particles that pulse and shimmer with bioluminescent sparks. This plankton buffet triggers a feeding frenzy that draws predators from the deep. Translucent jellyfish pulse through the water column. Baby squid demonstrate intelligence and curiosity, sometimes approaching divers with tentacles extended.
Who Belongs on This Extreme Adventure
Advanced Divers Only
This experience demands divers with exceptional buoyancy control and complete self-reliance underwater. The open ocean environment offers no reef walls or sandy bottoms for reference points; you maintain position through skill alone while suspended in liquid space. At least 50 logged dives provide the foundation for handling this unique challenge, while recent diving activity within six months ensures your skills remain sharp. Your guide requires that you converse comfortably in English for easy and rapid safety communications.
Confident Ocean Explorers
About half of our pelagic divers come from backgrounds in technical or cave diving, already comfortable with challenging underwater environments. The other half consists of recreational divers seeking the ultimate bucket-list experience, travelers who’ve explored coral reefs worldwide, and who crave something completely different.
Many participants describe this as their most memorable dive ever, comparing it to spacewalks or deep-sea research expeditions.
Bizarre Creatures of the Deep
Gelatinous Drifters
Paper nautilus shells float by like underwater space capsules, their delicate spiral forms housing female argonauts that pilot these living submarines through midnight waters. Siphonophores stretch across your vision like animated Christmas lights, their colonial bodies pulsing with coordinated bioluminescence that creates underwater auroras.
Nighttime Hunters
Juvenile octopuses no larger than your thumb perform color-changing displays that cycle through patterns faster than your eyes can follow. Their intelligence shows through curious behavior as they investigate dive lights, sometimes perching on equipment or arms while examining these underwater visitors.
Kona’s Unique Advantages for Pelagic Diving
Optimal Ocean Conditions
Kona’s leeward position creates consistently calm surface conditions that make open ocean diving possible when other locations remain too rough for safe operations. The protected waters extend well offshore, providing stable platforms for extended drifts in deep water.
The proximity to deep ocean trenches means short boat rides provide access to true pelagic environments. Within minutes of leaving Honokohau Harbor, you’re floating over thousands of feet of water where daily vertical migrations bring deep-sea creatures within recreational diving depths.
Minimal Light Pollution
The Big Island’s strict lighting ordinances protect sea turtle nesting beaches while creating ideal conditions for blackwater diving. Reduced coastal lighting allows marine life to follow natural patterns without artificial interference, ensuring authentic deep-ocean encounters.
The darkness also enhances the bioluminescent displays that make these dives magical. Every movement through the water triggers sparkles and flashes as disturbed plankton react with living light, creating personal fireworks shows around each diver.
Safety in the Midnight Ocean
Advanced safety protocols address the unique challenges of open ocean night diving. Emergency surface marker buoys keep the boat crew aware of your position while powerful dive lights provide backup illumination if primary systems fail. Dive computers monitor depth and bottom time while your guide maintains constant group awareness in the challenging environment.
Your guide carries emergency oxygen and maintains radio contact with the boat throughout the dive. The tether system ensures you remain within safe distances of the boat while allowing enough freedom to explore the vertical water column where creatures appear.
Planning Your Deep Ocean Adventure
Pelagic dives happen Sunday and Wednesday evenings, departing Honokohau Small Boat Harbor at 8:15 PM. Private charters accommodate custom scheduling for ultimate personalization. Check-in begins 45 minutes before departure for comprehensive briefings that cover open ocean diving procedures and marine life identification.
Bring only essentials:
Wetsuit
Mask
Certification cards
We provide all other equipment, including tanks, weights, and safety gear. Rental equipment costs an additional fee for those needing complete gear packages.
For smaller groups of 6 or fewer, call us 48 hours ahead for cancellation refunds. Larger groups and private charters need 72 hours’ notice for full refunds. We require a minimum group of 4 divers to launch this specialized adventure. If numbers fall short, we’ll reschedule your experience or provide complete refunds.
Book Your Liquid Space Adventure
Reserve your pelagic night dive today to view Kona’s deep waters.
This single-tank journey into midnight waters creates memories that last lifetimes. Floating suspended in liquid darkness while alien creatures drift past transforms your understanding of ocean life and your place within it.