Turn the light off and see the bioluminescent animals shining with their chemically generated light, trailing behind your sweeping arm movement. Basket stars unfold and nocturnal crinoids, having crawled out from their daytime crevices, feed by extending their arms into the current. Sea urchins emerge from their holes and march about the reef borders, grazing on algae and creating bare pathways as they go. Brittle stars and small shrimp and crabs are often seen, as are bristleworms out eating coral polyps or munching on anemones. This is the time to look for active octopuses, lobster, giant crabs, and large annelid worms.
Hermit crabs are usually everywhere, scavenging the reef in their clumsy, borrowed shells.
About an hour before dawn, a reversal of the evening transition begins. Schools of foraging goatfish, snappers, grunts, sweepers, squirrelfish, and drums reassemble from the sandy and rock bottom surrounding the reef and prepare to make their mass transit back to daytime resting valleys and crevices.