Kathleen,
 
Just adding my two cents to the Wes message, I particularly prefer a hand
rather than a headlight. You "loose" one hand but you have much more
options on lighting a subject.
 
Wes tells us about sea snakes being attracted by lights. In my case it was
not as poisonous (sea snakes are as poisonous as Conus geographus, very
curious animals, but no attacks have been reported) but thousands of sea
wormsbeing attracted by the lights, during a night dive in the Bahamas.
Even carrying the light in my hand, I had a dense cloud of worms
surrounding my head and my regulator. We aborted our dive spiting worms and
taking them out our ears and hairs. It was a night(mare) dive called "Worms
- The Attack of the Tiny Monsters".
 
Our divemaster told us that a way to avoid them is to bring the light (and
the worms) close to a head coral and see how fast it would eat the worms,
cleaning your way. Our next night dive was successful even with lots of
worms. It was really amazing to see the head coral eating the worms. The
head coral caught them with their extended polyps and brought the worms to
them, exploding them while eating. This time the film title was "Worms -
The Human Revenge"... By the end of our dive we heard a loud "blurp" and
the only explanation that we found was that a head coral ate too much that
night.    :-))))
 
I'm telling you this story just because if you need to snorkel in a cloud
of worms, you couldn't get rid of them with a headlight.
 
Reinforcing what was already said, bring an extra light (two better than
one) and leave a light on the beach.
 
Good luck in your shell collecting and tell us how successful it was when
back home.
 
Cheers,
 
Eduardo
Brasilia, Brazil
[log in to unmask]
 
 
PS: I wish you don't have nightmares tonight
 
 
 
 
 
De:   thorsson @ HITS.NET em 09/01/98 13:28 HST
 
Favor Responder a [log in to unmask]
 
Para: CONCH-L @ UGA.CC.UGA.EDU
cc:    (bcc: Jose Eduardo de Alencar Moreira/Telebras)
Assunto:  Shelling at night
 
 
It is often much more productive to shell at night, particularly for
sand dwellers and some cones.  In Samoa it was interesting that the sea
snakes were very attracted to your light and with only 6 inches of water
under you it is more interesting.  About the only way to get rid of them
was to turn off the light.
...
 
If you are going far, getting back when a light fails (I had two failure
on a Thailand trip) is also interesting.  The comment on carrying a
spare is really very well advised.
Aloha,
Wes