What safety equipment is essential for night diving?

In night diving, visibility is significantly reduced, making effective lighting crucial for safe exploration. A primary dive light is essential for illuminating your surroundings, identifying potential hazards, and communicating with your dive buddy. A backup light is equally important because it ensures that you have a secondary source of illumination should your primary light malfunction or fail. Proper lighting not only enhances safety but also allows divers to appreciate nighttime marine life without getting disoriented or lost in the dark.

The other options listed contribute to safety in diving but do not address the unique challenges posed by nighttime conditions as directly as lighting does. A reflective wetsuit may help to some extent with visibility to others, but it does not assist in illuminating your path underwater. A GPS device is useful for navigation on the surface but may not be effective or necessary while diving at night, where underwater orientation and visibility are key. Finally, while a diving knife and a compass are valuable tools in some diving situations, they do not specifically enhance visibility, which is the primary concern during night dives.