“At night, it’s not about the distance covered,” explains Mateo Dura, the owner of Key West’s Ibis Bay Paddle Sports, which began offering nighttime SUP tours this spring. “It’s all about going very slow and searching for sea life on the bottom.” On any given evening, Dura sees nurse sharks, stingrays, turtles, and spiny lobsters flit through the spotlight beneath his feet.

If you’ve ever used an underwater torch while diving or snorkeling, picture that – on steroids. The system harnesses 72 LED lights to the bottom of a board using a tension system and singes the underwater surrounds with 2000 lumen of light. “In Key West, the lights illuminate an area of about 50 feet around you and 15 to 20 feet down,” says Nocqua’s Billy Rossini, the world champion kneeboarder who invented the tech after admiring the fancy lighting he saw on yachts in Florida’s islands. “It was purely for visual effect,” says Rossini, “but it attracted a lot of fish, and I thought ‘How cool would this be if I could have that underneath my paddleboard?'”

Read the aritcle at mensjournal.com