Laguna Beach-If you’re one of the 6 billion-or-so humans who hasn’t visited another planet, it’d almost take a sci-fi writer’s imagination to envision what it’s like to be near zero-gee, inches above a surface that’s part waving grassland and part sand interspersed with mysterious crags and crevices, slowly progressing through pitch black darkness—on a hunt for bugs.

Round, beady little eyeballs stare up at you. Crazy looking antennae twitch. The little, elusive beastie darts quicker than you’d imagine into a small cave. Adventurous hunters hover upside down and stick their heads in the cave, followed quickly by a gloved hand, to snatch the bug, if they can. 

Bugging season, as lobster hunters like to call it, has arrived. With a little preparation and training, nightly adventurers wander into otherworldly environs off the coast in search of the California spiny lobster. Lobster season started Oct. 3, and ends on March 17. While it may sound like a sport reserved for the extreme types, lobster hunting doesn’t demand a great deal of daring or peak athletic fitness. But it does require a little training if you are new to the sport and scuba diving.

A few weeks ago I decided to spend my birthday finishing off my advanced open water diver certification with a nighttime dive, the last of five required dives for that level of proficiency. I was first introduced to scuba diving last April in Jamaica, when I paid $100 for a Discover Scuba Diving experience—some local diving shops offer the introductory program for free. Thanks to lax standards on the island, the “experience” consisted of a brief stint in a pool learning to breathe through a regulator before plunging into the warm waters of the Caribbean for a pair of dives down to about 40 feet.

A basic scuba certification typically costs around $400 for classes, which may include a boat trip out to Catalina Island, but you can shop around for less expensive programs that teach students via shore dives only. Lesson plans vary, but it generally takes about nine hours of pool time practicing some scuba basics, as well as some class time and a bit of studying, then four ocean dives to demonstrate certain skills. The advance diver program entails five ocean dives and some more book learning, but the knowledge and training received is well worth it. Taking an underwater hunting class is recommended, which not only teaches safety and environmentally sensitive techniques, but it can help hone your skills so that you can actually catch one of the lightning quick critters.

To bug hunt one must pay for a fishing license with an ocean enhancement stamp, as well as pay about $7 for a lobster report card, get a lobster gauge (minimum size is 3.25 in. on the midline of the back from the edge of the eye socket to the edge of the body shell, according Fish and Game) and a bag with which to hold the catch.

“There’s a technique and it takes practice,” says Lakewood resident Thomas Holmes, a scuba instructor who teaches Sports Chalet’s underwater hunting classes. “For one thing, lobsters are nocturnal. They come out and night and forage for food, which makes it difficult. And you need to know that the smaller the lobster the quicker they are. They just flip their tail and shoot backward. Grabbing them by the tail is one technique, but you have to be careful if you reach into holes for them, as it’s very common for eels to be in the same holes as lobster.”

The eel I saw during my night dive at Laguna Beach’s Wood’s Cove was pretty fierce looking, so heed Holmes’ advice.

Avid bug hunter and underwater photographer Mike Sieverman, a retired Signal Hill police officer who often dives and takes photos for New England Divers, states: “It's about as level a playing field as the creatures get, we’re in their environment, breathing from a tank, unable to see without lights, so the odds are in their favor. When they come out to feed at night, they are typically in the open, and, if you’re quick enough, can be grabbed up and stuffed into a bag.”

Wood’s has a tricky beach entry and exit that requires one to wade through a small strip of sand between rocks. Once in and under, eelgrass combined with a bit of underwater surge, which presents added challenge on a night dive, can be pretty disorienting immediately after you first drop down. Once you’ve got your bearings, numerous man-sized cracks run through the reef at the bottom in which one can navigate inside of and explore, each side offering abundant nooks sheltering ocean life.

And if you didn’t get it when I first wrote it, the blackness is incredible. Picture shining a small pen light in a dark closet: whatever you shine the light on is illuminated, and everything a few feet away in your peripheral vision is about as black as space. Once you’ve learned to deal with the deceptive effects of waving eelgrass, which causes the brain to believe it is really you who is moving, and you settle into the darkness, the wanders of night diving unfold.

By the end of my night dive, among the spotted creatures were about half-a-dozen lobster, none large enough for any of the hunters out that evening to keep, and several species of fish and eels. The experience was draining, and getting some Earth back under my feet was a treat—though the long trek up a seemingly endless flight of stairs with a scuba tank on my back, about 27 pounds in weights, and a water-logged wetsuit, was tiring to say the least. Gravity can be a bugger sometimes.

Photos courtesy Mike Sieverman