Soft green, blue and purple lights have been bobbing around in Pilot Bay after dark this week. A new night time activity is springing up that's thrilling marine life lovers. And romantics.

Stand up paddle boarders with lights attached to their boards – SUPs - are enjoying the opportunity to quietly explore shallow water marine life at night. Below them, the possibility of octopus, stingray and other fish.

Strapped to the underside of their SUPs, the water torches are covered with different colour cellophane in order to help identify each other's boards as they slowly slide across the surface of the water.

Julian Pirog, here on a working holiday from France, has been teaching kite surfing, windsurfing and stand up paddle boarding.

He says that for night time paddling prior proficiency is important.

Opting for calm nights and staying close to shore, the paddle boarders are expected to already have had some experience paddle boarding and be able to handle themselves safely, following instructions.

'People need to have had about an hour SUP introduction first, in the daytime,” says Julian.

'For night time paddle boarding, the weather needs to be calm. And we stay within Pilot Bay. We start after dark, and just do a small tour. The goal is not to go too far, to spot some sea life.”

His boss, Glenn Bright, developed the idea from a video he saw, but uses stronger LED lights on their boards.

'We started the idea in Tonga as a night time activity there,” says Glenn. 'It can either be just an amazing experience or a romantic experience.”

'I saw the idea in a little promo video where people were just paddling at night time with it, but it wasn't very good, the lights that were on the boards just gave the boards a glow and you couldn't really see anything. So I did a whole lot of research on how to set it up with some decent lights. We've got some really powerful LED lights that are like an underwater spotlight rather than just a glow. So you get the ambiance of the colour and the light but you also get to see the marine life. We ran it in Tonga where we do stand up paddle boarding and it was really popular.

Jess Lindsay, age 12 years, with her sister April ventured out with Julian on Saturday night.

'It's something so different,” says April. 'I've never seen anything like this anywhere else.”

'It's a really cool experience,” agrees Jess.

Also out paddling with the group were Dion Watchorn and Rachael Laird. Dion thought it was quite a romantic experience.

'We've done a bit of paddle boarding before,” says Rachael. 'We weren't really sure what it was going to be like at night. It was better than I thought it could be.”

'Everyone has their own colour torch,” says Julian. 'And we try to paddle real slow so as not to create too much turbulence on the water. As soon as someone spots something, either an octopus, fish or stingray, we try to stay steady so everyone can come and see.”

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Each SUP has a different coloured light.