Our first night snorkel of the season!! We headed out at 6:30 pm to anchor the dinghies near a shallow reef. We had several boats in attendance, including several folks for whom this would be their first night snorkeling experience, with a total of 8 people. After about 5 minutes, it became apparent that the batteries were dying in my dive lite, so I took off in the dinghy back to the boat to replace the batteries and a few minutes later I was back on the reef with a wonderful light! The other folks were now half way 'round their counter-clockwise circumnavigation of the reef, so I decided to go clockwise. Lots of small lobsters out walking around and a spotted eel before I came upon an octopus out feeding...he would travel from head to head and "balloon out" to check for something to eat, then onto the next one. When traveling over sand, he would feel around with his tentacles and if he found a hole in the sand, would reach in and see if he could find something. He was completely undisturbed by the folks gawking at him and continued about his business. I shouted for the others who eventually came to watch him as well--but they had been watching another one on the northern side of the reef. When we surfaced about 2 hours later, only the "die hards" were left to enjoy the hot cocoa spiked with rum and cakes and cookies in our dinghy raft-up before we headed back to the boats under a blanket of stars.