40: BONFIRE OR BLACK WATER DIVING - THE NEW RAGE? We try it in Anilao and it was FREAKY!!!

Our adventure takes us from our home in Qingdao, China where we fly to Manila, Philippines and then take a two and a half hour bus to Anhuau. Big night ahead of us. We are doing our first ever bonfire dive. We've been here for almost eight days. Tomorrow is our final dive day and this is our last night to be able to dive. So we're doing what's called a bonfire dive. That sounds really interesting. I didn't know that fires could survive underwater. Wow, do they build it with like wood underneath? The bonfire dive is basically the boat behind us is going to take us out about 50 feet from shore and then drop a light down about 30 feet in the water and then we are going to dangle at around 30 feet and see what plankton comes by or some juvenile something comes past us and hopefully we'll get something on film for you to be able to see or not film, video. What we're looking for is very unusual. It's not a typical night dive. We're looking, there's a lot of really healthy reef life here and these animals grow. Yeah, so it's larval. So it's in the larval state. So these are going to be like outer space looking creatures, semi-transparent. I don't know whether the videos could be able to pick up on it but there's lots of phosphorescence. But it's just a whole new world and a whole new type of night diving, isn't it? Yeah. And it's just started here in Antelio within the last year. Yeah, it's supposed to be the top five place to do the bonfire dive. Blackwater diving is also really popular. That's where they take you out into the deep trench of the ocean and they drag you along the bottom of the boat for a while and with lights as well. But you see different things there than you will here. And the bonfire is kind of a way to do it without having to go so far in a boat. It's less expensive and you're not being dangled over a 3,000 foot trench of water which could go really wrong. So it's more doable. It's a new thing and I'm really looking forward to it. Aren't you, sweetie? Yep, so am I. So we'll give you a report later on about it. Okay, let's do it. Thank you for watching our Antelio bonfire diving video and make sure to stay tuned until the end where I give you my GoPro Hero 7 settings that I use to shoot these fabulous critters with as well as our wrap-up summary of the dive. The word plankton comes from the Greek word planktos meaning wanderer or drifter. Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms that live in large bodies of water and are unable to swim against a current. They provide a crucial source of food to many small and large aquatic organisms such as bivalves, fish, and whales. Phytoplankton are the oxygen and sugar producing heroes and are at the bottom of the food chain made up of algae that photosynthesize using sun to turn carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar. Zooplankton are the small animals in the immature larval stage and these are the smallest objects that we're interested in for our bonfire diving. Their range is microscopic to larger multi-celled organisms that eat the smaller zooplankton. Juvenile fish eat the zooplankton and then are eaten by larger animals such as squid and even larger animals. The ideal bonfire diving spot is in five to ten meters of water with no current. Our dive site called Basara is located in Analau, Philippines and has little to no current. The underwater lights are set up either on the bottom or the mooring line and attract plankton which starts a feeding frenzy of little critters. With the lights to your back you venture out to darker water using your flashlight on narrow beam to locate zooplankton and then lighting the subject with a more diffused flood beam while you're photographing so as not to burn out your subject. It's a little awkward at first but keep experimenting and you'll get the hang of it. Please note that this will test your buoyancy skills as you will want to float with the organisms while following with your lights and camera. Use the bonfire lights and ear pressure to monitor your depth. At first your group will be a little disoriented close to and bumping into each other which is normal but you will soon get braver to venture out from the lights once you get acclimated to your new diving situation. Take a look way deeper, way below the surface. I can finally breathe out. We should go underwater where the light can't reach us. No one there to judge us. You can finally breathe out. We made it. We're back. We lived through it. What an experience. That was definitely crazy. Yeah that was not your typical night dive. No definitely not. Probably the most challenging as a photographer or videographer to try and capture anything. All of the plankton was moving at light speed. It was impossible to focus on anything and you had the added challenge of trying. You're just completely disoriented because there was no there was nothing to see. No reef. It was just black water so you had no idea where you were, what depth you were at, at any point in time. You just had to really depend upon your ears and if your ears were clearing you knew you were going down and that was really the only way to know unless you stopped focusing on the plankton but it was amazing. Oh my goodness and I realized how bad my buoyancy is. Yeah yeah you get to know how like you need to dial that buoyancy in so you're I mean it's black and you need to be just totally still in order to get these things. You're moving your hands but if you're moving and you're having to move your hands it's just total chaos. Yeah we saw some great things. Some larval I think octopi, some lobster. Yeah we're going to look them up and label all of them for you. Mantis shrimp. It was incredible the larval stage that they're in and you can still recognize them what they are. Some pipefish, some banded coral pipefish. Really incredible. Some of them were out of the larva stage and the juvenile stage which is so just all different. But it was just chaos. Like you've never seen it. Yeah it's like you're in outer space almost. Flying around with a jet pack trying to catch crazy creatures flying around. Neon lights it was it was really quite quite interesting and entertaining. And we're lucky I think some of it actually came out on camera and we just can't share it with you. Yeah so thanks for coming along with us. Guys if you like videos really good diving videos and you like adventure videos please subscribe. Just hit the uh hit the button right down there and like and do us a real big favor and please share these videos okay. We really appreciate you guys coming along with us and uh thanks a lot. Yeah thanks a lot. Time to clean our gear and get to bed for tomorrow's dives. Okay and now for the video settings on my GoPro 7 that I used in this video. For video quality you're going to want to select 1080 resolution at 120 frames per second which is going to allow you to replay these in detailed slow motion. Also you're going to want to set your field of view at linear not wide angle for these videos. Stabilization is at auto. ISO minimum 100. ISO maximum 800. Sharpness is at low and color is flat.