There’s rarely a daytime dive I have to rally myself for. Even when there isn’t much to see, I’m generally content just being neutrally buoyant in the no-Wi-Fi zone—a near-meditative state for me, or about as close to it as I get since I’m by no means the kind of consistently calm person who manages to meditate for long on dry land. Underwater, though, I just go with the fish and the flow.

Sometimes I even miss the fish, I’m so caught up in that flow. But if there’s one kind of dive I always need a little encouragement to get in the mood for, it’s a night dive.

Especially on a liveaboard, once evening time rolls around—particularly when I’ve already logged several dives earlier in the day—the last thing I’m usually up for is squeezing back into a damp wetsuit when I could be suspended on a hammock under some palms, sipping something frosty for sunset. This is my idea of the best finale to a great day diving. So night dives tend to hit me with the same feeling as going to the gym: something I kind of dread but am always glad I suited up and did.

Related Reading: How to Conquer Your Fear of Night Diving

I remember my first night dive in Bonaire. I’d come to Captain Don’s Habitat to get my PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certification. Captain Don himself was at dinner that night to congratulate our group on finishing the course, which had wrapped with a thrilling night dive on the house reef where our torch beams were constantly crisscrossed by massive tarpon that materialized in the darkness just over our shoulders.

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Once, while night diving in the Florida Keys, I observed an underwater world that was completely obscured during the day, including my first sighting of an unfurled basket star. Hidden on the spur and groove reefs in the daylight when they curl up tightly into themselves, these ophiuroids that are closely related to sea stars open after dark to feed. They look like alien ferns descended from a foreign galaxy, all whimsical swirls and curls.

Last year in Tobago, after three daytime dives with Tobago Dive Experience, I was again coaxed onto a dive boat under the cover of darkness to see a site called Turtle Reef. We dropped straight into a wonderland of sleeping turtles, their heads wedged under sponges the same way I cover my own with a pillow at night.

Beyond the dozing turtles, a large expanse of sand stretched out in the torchlight. It looked like a Spanish galleon had lost a treasure chest of rubies, glittering with a zillion eyes of red night shrimp scampering about. Surfacing into the inky warm evening later, my dive buddy, who was new to night diving and similarly had to rally for the occasion, gasped, “I can’t believe all I’ve been missing out on.”

I was similarly elated—it was as if I’d gone to the gym, gotten that athlete’s high and earned my imminent reward (that cold beer and hot dinner waiting).