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Small mollusks, like this Veliger species, are frequent subjects on blackwater dives off Guam
 

Years ago, when I was a US Air Force student pilot, I remember flying an instrument cross-country mission in a T-38 jet trainer. For these flights, the student sat in the back seat of the aircraft and the instructor pilot (IP)/safety observer sat in front. As soon as we broke ground, I slid a hood over the back canopy to remove all outside visual references and flew the entire sortie relying solely on flight instruments. On short final approach, the instructor pilot told me to pull the hood back, and to my immense gratification, there was the runway at our planned destination.

We accomplished this sortie with support from ground crews, aircraft, avionics, instrument flight training, ground navigation aids, air traffic control, flight publications, and much more. In short, while I was the one who did the flying, I could not have done even this simple cross-country mission without a lot of help and advance planning.

Why do I mention this at the beginning of an article on blackwater diving? Well, firstly, to casually squeeze in the fact that I’m a pilot (although for the record, I am neither a vegan nor a CrossFit devotee). Secondly, and more pertinently, that experience had a lot of parallels with starting a blackwater diving project at a new destination—in our case, Guam, where we have lived since 2004. For example, figuring out where and when to go, how to get there, and what to do when we got there was full of unknowns, requiring trust in the expertise, experience, and support of many others.

While we’re still on the steep part of our learning curve, we’ve worked through many of the initial growing pains. In this article, I will step through some of the highlights of our journey.
 

Occasional sightings of larval mantis shrimp, with their flips and rolls, are always entertaining

Where and When

Unlike many Pacific island destinations, Guam has a fringing reef that is close to shore, rather than a wide and relatively shallow atoll. In addition, our ocean geography features narrow reef shelves that rapidly drop to great depths. The world-famous Mariana Trench—featuring the deepest water in the world—runs in an arc from the northeast to the southwest of Guam.

Thus, before our first blackwater dive, I invested in a nautical chart of our area and studied Guam’s depth contours. I also invested in the C-MAP app in order to refine our proposed site coordinates. I knew we needed to constrain our ambitions by the location of available marinas/harbors, which are all on our west coast, ranging from our large, mid-island harbor down to the southern tip of the island. Prevailing winds and surf, as well as a lack of boat access, make diving off the east coast of Guam impractical at best and dangerous at worst.

In addition, Guam’s prevailing surface wind is an easterly “trade wind.” Many in-shore dive sites are in the lee of this wind, because the surface geography features steep cliffs and mountainous terrain in those areas.
 

Boats during “golden hour” at Agat Marina: Guam’s marinas are all on the island’s west coast
 

Guam map showing how winds and terrain constrained the choice of exploratory dive sites
 

Several face plants and bruised ribs later, we realized that the lee effect rapidly diminishes when you get more than a half mile or so from the coast—where the deeper water starts—so we needed to study sea states, prevailing winds, and tides in greater detail for blackwater than we did for other dives.

Thus, we had to limit potential sites to those reasonably accessible by commercial boat operators, with relatively deep water of 500 feet (150 meters) or greater, and acceptable sea conditions. This drove us to do our initial dives off the southern half of Guam’s west coast.
 

Guam’s blackwater dives often feature small pteropods like this pair of sea butterflies
 

As for the “when” to do blackwater, there is discussion and disagreement within the blackwater diving community about whether the target environment is richer during the full moon, new moon, half moon, or in-between. Equally, high tide, low tide, slack tide, or moving from one to another. In addition, what time of day or night is best? For us, this last parameter has been limited by boat operators wanting to depart our inadequately lighted local marinas in daylight so that at least one of their docking maneuvers is well illuminated.

To sustain interest in blackwater on Guam, we’ve strived for at least one boat dive a month. We also post our blackwater images on social media, to include Guam-centric, non-diver sites. We generally list the depth of the bottom for each image, which often generates some funny questions from non-diving members of these groups.

My bottom line on the “when” is: It’s still a work in progress. Ask me in a year.
 

Larval octopuses are episodic in their appearance, but when they show up, it’s usually in abundance

How

Guam has a thriving dive industry, with a few large dive shops. Since I believed it best to start with only a few divers, it seemed impractical to partner with a big shop because they only had larger boats that were expensive to charter. So, we focused on smaller dive operators, but on Guam these generally cater to specific tourist niches, e.g., Koreans, Japanese, and so on. In addition, they had little to no knowledge of blackwater diving.

Thus, we needed to show patience and diligence. That eventually paid off when we persuaded three small operators, each capable of taking only six passengers at a time, to give it a try. I had to educate the captains in our plans, procedures, and equipment for blackwater. An amusing incident occurred on our first dive, with a particularly anxious captain. When my wife and I surfaced, with the other divers still below, he yelled to us from the boat, “Did they die?” We quickly erased his concern, and holding back our laughter, reassured him that they were, in fact, alive and well!
 

The author (left) reviews the evening’s dive plan with one of our captains
 

To help with confidence building, I initially limited our blackwater group to divers with whom I had experience or who held a professional certification. This was not due to elitism, but rather to risk mitigation. I figured if we took an inexperienced diver with us before we had enough experience ourselves and they had an incident, it might scare off the boat operators and generate adverse perceptions within the dive community. Even though seasoned people are also prone to screw-ups, night diving is enough of a challenge for most new divers that I put a premium on overall experience at the start of the venture.

At this point, I need to thank Mike Bartick, the invisible “instructor pilot” in my blackwater front seat. I met Mike when I attended one of his photo workshops at Crystal Blue Resort in Anilao, Philippines. Back then, my wife and I had only done a single blackwater dive, in Lembeh, a few years prior. While the experience was interesting, we both saw it as a bit of a bucket list thing at the time.

However, Mike’s many contributions to blackwater diving, including his e-book The World of Blackwater and co-leadership of Facebook Group Blackwater Photo Group, motivated us to look into starting it on Guam. We used Mike’s book to entice experienced divers to join our initial cadre. My wife and I also leveraged our efforts in developing a cadre of underwater photo and video enthusiasts to generate a “buzz” about blackwater.
 

This larval eel came up and presented a nearly-perfect “golden spiral”

What

There are a number of ways to do blackwater. The first proponents typically tethered divers to a boat. Each diver was responsible for attracting creatures, and if shooting, capturing images. While this let operators tightly control divers’ position and depth, some people believed it prioritized safety and risk mitigation over productive dives. It also led to problems with managing current because the entire boat, with its large kinetic energy and momentum, had to be slowed in strong current.

Over time, a new technique using a lighted downline began to supersede tethering. This technique, outlined in Mike’s e-book, has boat crews deploy a standalone weighted line, with a number of attached bright lights, to attract creatures migrating from the depths. Divers swim independently of the boat and drift with the downline, shooting as they go. This method increases the risk of a lost diver, or a diver losing situational awareness and busting depth limits, because of the lack of references in the blackwater environment. While you can mitigate these hazards, they are not as ironclad as a tether. The benefit, however, is better productivity and image capture.

Hence, using Mike’s advice, I put together our first downline. In this effort, I am again indebted to him because he introduced me to Doug Taleski from Kraken Sports, who is an avid supporter of blackwater diving worldwide. A couple of us pooled our resources and bought eight Kraken Solar Flare Mini 15000 lights for the downline. The intensity and color temperature of these 15,000-lumen lights attracts a diverse range of creatures from the deep. Running at 9,000 lumens, they provide impressive capability for our (up to) 90-minute dives.

I went to a local marine supply store and bought a bright orange float—what Mike calls a “pumpkin”—as well as a 10-lb weight and enough line to rig the whole thing. I used metal strobe arms and clamps to secure the lights to the line. I continue to make adjustments and improvements to the downline based on diver feedback.
 

The downline is an example of continual process improvement. Here, quality control inspector Ms. Ozzy D. Katt confirms the line meets all PADI, OSHA, ISO, ICAO, FCC, and FDA requirements!
 

After the first couple of dives, I put together our Blackwater Rules of Engagement (ROE). I ask all new divers to review and sign the ROE before their first blackwater dive with us. It is quite specific and emphasizes diver discipline as well as contingencies. The ROE can be downloaded here (PDF), and readers should feel free to use them for their blackwater dives.

We have discovered that blackwater provides more incentive for buddies to stay together than most other types of underwater photography. First, we recognize that loss of situationa awareness is the number one hazard of blackwater diving, so buddies clearly help each other with this. In addition, we’ve found that good buddy discipline yields more efficient and effective shooting.

Here is one example of our process: When one of us spots a potential subject, this diver holds their focus light on it and also raises their pointer near it. The other diver acquires the subject in the camera, takes two shots and then keeps their light on it (and pointer nearby), allowing the original spotter to take two shots. In the course of this process, we maneuver our bodies to be at roughly 90 degrees to one another. This puts lights at two angles on the subject, aiding focus and keeping the lights out of each others’ eyes. If the subject is particularly interesting, we repeat the process. When we finish with that subject, we immediately turn toward the downline. This helps us keep situational awareness on our position relative to the line as well as other buddy teams.

This is just one example of how we continue to refine our processes. Eventually, I believe it would be fruitful for blackwater locations to collaborate on what they find in their waters and correlate this with a variety of other parameters like time of year, moon phase, tides, depth of the bottom, and so on. I suspect we would learn a lot from each other and make all our efforts more effective.
 

Final Thoughts

I believe blackwater will stick on Guam, as long as we tend to it and continue our battle rhythm of approximately one dive a month. Future efforts could include visits out to the Mariana Trench and other deeper areas. Until then, we will continue our quest to incrementally improve what we are doing.
 

We sometimes see blackwater subjects that we would more typically find on reef dives, like this male cardinalfish mouth brooding his partner’s eggs
 

More commonly seen on the reef—although actually very rarely seen on Guam’s reefs—this juvenile longhorn cowfish is another surprising blackwater subject
 

About the Author: Steve Wolborsky has lived in the US territory of Guam since 2004. A retired member of both the US military and civil service, Steve learned to dive shortly after arriving on the island. Thousands of dives and 30-plus dive trips later, he is passionate about the ocean, diving, and all things underwater photography. Steve and his wife MJ both shoot with Nikon D850s and they specialize in macro/supermacro. Their favorite locations for the small stuff are Lembeh in Indonesia as well as Anilao, Dauin, and Puerto Galera in the Philippines—and, of course, Guam.