Night Reef — La Passe de l'Ermitage

The reef passage at L'Ermitage undergoes a complete transformation after dark, when the reef fish that shoal visibly during the day retreat into crevices and nocturnal predators take their place — making this one of the best night dives on Réunion and one of the few places in the Indian Ocean where the endemic Réunion bullrout scorpionfish can be reliably found. The bullrout (Scorpaenopsis mauritiana subspecies endemic to the Mascarene Islands) hunts in the shallows from dusk onward, using its cryptic coloration against the reef to ambush reef fish in water as shallow as 4 metres. Octopus emerge to hunt across the sand, cone snails creep along the rubble, and hunting morays probe crevices alongside the torchlit reef.