Ultraviolet Night Diving

[Jeremy]

Thinking of doing this in Bonaire.

Anyone have a chance to try this? Could you share your experience? Sounds amazing with the flourescence being quite different from bioluminescence.

[Jeremy]

"Most night divers are familiar with bioluminescence, where single-celled organisms glow when disturbed by fin kicks or any other turbulence in the water. Fluorescence has similar properties because both are a type of luminescence, however it is only seen when shining a UV light on the subject, which stimulates the glow. The effect of the UV light is maximized at night when there are no ambient light wavelengths."

[Alexitt]

Very Cool!!! This begs the question though... Where does one come up with a waterproof blacklight???? and How much to aquire one???

[Nwbrewer]

Very Cool!!! This begs the question though... Where does one come up with a waterproof blacklight???? and How much to aquire one???

Most LED Dive lights could be moded easily. Especially something like an SL4 or 6. UV drop ins can be had from DealExtreme or ebay for a couple of $.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/CREE-Purple-Lig ... 25682c28de

[H20doctor]

What color leds? .. If anyone wants a UV set up I will build one for you..

[Jeremy]

What color leds? .. If anyone wants a UV set up I will build one for you..

Let's talk!

[Mateo1147]

When I was at Buddy Dive in January they had a guided ultraviolet dive most nights of the week. Anyone could sign up and they provided a blacklight and glasses to the divers. I never did it but looked cool.

[LCF]

I wonder if using UV would avoid the issue of the nocturnal creatures hiding from dive lights? That might be very cool.

[H20doctor]

the only thing I'm worried about is altra violet light is very bad for your eyes.. and if there's a danger by looking at a light rig.. ?

[Jeremy]

What color leds? .. If anyone wants a UV set up I will build one for you..

I have an extra UKC8 eLED and a smaller Princeton Tec that I never use. I'd love it if you could set one of them up as an UV light!

On the eye exposure, seems like the Bonaire outfit also passes out glasses or something. Maybe these are for eye protection. Also heard that coral could be adversely affected by long term exposure to ultraviolet. A night dive with an UV light would only be shining a light on the objects for a matter of minutes at most.

[Tom Nic]

IIRC most outfits in Bonaire use a light cannon with some sort of lens that you bungie over the end, combined with lenses that you kit over your mask - both are necessary to get the effect.

[H20doctor]

if you buy these , i will stuff into water proof housings .... maybe buy 3 of them.. ?
http://www.lazerpoint.com/p-ultrafire-w ... QgodxHcAJQ

or buy the module that nwbrewer suggested ... either way im game , as i want to film biolumens anyway

UV light in 350nm+ band is pretty safe as long as you take precautions as with any bright light (LED lights can be quite "intense"). As UV in these wavelengths is mainly invisible, you can't judge how bright it is from how bright it "feels", but it will be affecting your eyes never the less. And your pupils will be dilated, letting in more light. But I've been in many night clubs where they routinely have 4' UV florescent tubes (350-360nm peak) lit all night without any problems that I know of. If you stare for a while into any bright light your sight is going to be affected, it follows that if you stare too long you might cause physical damage.


The lower wavelength you go the more dangerous the UV light. Some sources of dangerous UV light are:
welding operations
biological laboratories where gels are visualized
areas in which germicidal UV lights are used, including biological safety cabinets
libraries where UV light may be used to examine documents
science laboratories where Mineralights are used to cause fluorescence
mercury vapor lamps with broken or missing envelopes
Germicidal lights can be bought for water purification processes on ebay so beware.


Symptoms of over-exposure occur several hours afterwards and include:
a burning and painful sensation in the eye
a sensitivity to light
the sensation of a foreign object in the eye, sometimes described as sand in the eye
tearing

[Jeremy]

if you buy these , i will stuff into water proof housings .... maybe buy 3 of them.. ?
http://www.lazerpoint.com/p-ultrafire-w ... QgodxHcAJQ

or buy the module that nwbrewer suggested ... either way im game , as i want to film biolumens anyway

Which way would you prefer?

[H20doctor]

the drop in would be the easy way .... as it has the driver all ready in it and i can Frankenstein the bad boy ..

[Jeremy]

Bioflourescence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLMAyYHN ... ure=relmfu

[Jeremy]

[Jeremy]

the drop in would be the easy way .... as it has the driver all ready in it and i can Frankenstein the bad boy ..

How many do you want to make?

[oregondiver]

I have a UV dive light on my xmas list. Scuba board has this incredible guy named Lars B (or just plain ole Lars?) who can go all technical and awesome at teh drop of a penny. So if you ask HIM questions...be prepared for an answer.

Anyway, there are serveral options (sounds like H20Doc is the man to make one!). NightSea offers them

http://guest.engelschall.com/~sb/fluo-diving/
Excellent discourse/links/information

http://www.firedivegear.com/products/torches/
As of today, 1/2 the owners of this company are diving in asia but they said they can get me one for under $200 for what i want it to do.

http://www.tek-tite.com/src/products.php?c=3025
This company (again today...) sent me this link for their Flouro diving lights

And last of all...You can order woods glass to go OVER your HID light (look on scuba board and a guy I have been talking to did this, along with pictures) http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Nt ... yes&sts=ma

[KneeDeep]

Wow.. I missed this post. I have a topical tank at home with lots of hard corals, and when I only turn on my Actinic lights (12,000 Kelvin range) I get this. It's amazing... almost looks like a 70's black velvet poster

[dwashbur]

Hey, Dusty! Interchangeable heads for your Dusty's Lights?????

[H20doctor]

Hey, Dusty! Interchangeable heads for your Dusty's Lights?????

um did you read? wrong voltage..3.7 volts.. the Chip is 3 watts max voltage

[dwashbur]

Hey, Dusty! Interchangeable heads for your Dusty's Lights?????

um did you read? wrong voltage..3.7 volts.. the Chip is 3 watts max voltage

If anybody can figure it out, he can.

[H20doctor]

And I cant ? I've been building Dive lights since 1990.. I don't doubt dusty can.. it's a matter of does he want to?.. not every diver wants a UV set up.. and it's a matter of just throwing the module into SLK.. anyone here on the board can do that

[dwashbur]

And I cant ? I've been building Dive lights since 1990.. I don't doubt dusty can.. it's a matter of does he want to?.. not every diver wants a UV set up.. and it's a matter of just throwing the module into SLK.. anyone here on the board can do that

I don't know if you can or not, I don't know you. I do know Dusty and have one of his lights and love it. Take a chill pill, bro.

[LarsB]

Scuba board has this incredible guy named Lars B (or just plain ole Lars?) who can go all technical and awesome at teh drop of a penny. So if you ask HIM questions...be prepared for an answer.

Dear oregondiver,

thanks a lot for the high esteem and compliments! :-)

Actually UV light (< 400 nm) has a slight advantage but also quite a disadvantage:
The advantage is that you don't need any filters, neither for your mask nor for your camera.
The big disadvantage is that UV light does not stimulate fluorescence as much as does blue light.
There are even corals that do not fluoresce in UV light at all, but they do with blue light.
On top of that, high-power UV LEDs are much more expensive and less powerful than comparable blue LEDs.
(And I am not talking about 5 mm LEDs here, obviously!)

Results with UV light around 400 nm aren't much better. See here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jop8jQYRBQ8 for a comparison with a small torch with blue light (the brighter one) and a torch with a UV LED (the much darker one).

So unless you want to experiment or take fluorescence photos or videos different from most other people, blue light is much better! Probably because marine life has adapted to water, which is more transparent to blue light than it is to UV. The downside is however that you will also need the right filters.

This is all described in detail here http://www.firedivegear.com/products/#technology and here: http://www.firedivegear.com/science/barrierfilters/

You might also want to read http://www.firedivegear.com/science/excitationfilters/ in order to find out why blue excitation filters are necessary in addition to the blue light source (LEDs).

Hope this helps not to waste your money.

In order to see fluorescence with UV, you need a really powerful torch, which will cost about 400 Euros for the LEDs (4x Nichia NC4U133A) alone.

See here http://picasaweb.google.com/ostbey/HowT ... ivingLamp3 for such a torch and here for a video made with that torch: https://picasaweb.google.com/1108157129 ... 8634462546

And see here for a smaller UV torch http://picasaweb.google.com/ostbey/HowT ... ivingLamp2 (2x Nichia NCSU033B) and here for the pitiful results obtained with it: https://picasaweb.google.com/1108157129 ... 8695653586

Now compare that to a video taken with blue light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V9TCdCbX6U

Good luck!