Ten years ago, I got my PADI. In the last five, diving has become a passion.
The world underwater is a truly amazing place to be. Here's an attempt to translate the experience into words.
The Colours
If you think there are amazing colours on land, try the sea. A rainbow has been caught, frozen to crystal, shattered into a million billion tiny pieces, and strewn lustily into the ocean. There are fish of every tone and hue. Transparent, reflective, dusted with glitter. Some glow, lit from within. It's a fish disco, a fiesta, a carnival of colours. My favourites are the bright purple and neon yellow striped ones.
The Sounds
If you're into yoga, you'll get this one. Breathe in, breathe out. Focus on your breath. Breathing is everything, the calm centre. The main sounds you hear when you're diving are breath. First, the click and wheeze as your regulator sighs. Next, the burst of air into the water as exhalation begins, then the stream of bubbles, their metallic echo, part inside your head, part without. Finally: the silence. Maybe tinged with an imperceptible tone at the tip top of the range... an eardrum protesting the ten, twenty, thirty tonnes of water stacked on it. Otherwise; silence. Deep, deep, deep, purple silence.
The Life
Life underwater doesn't come in ones. It come in tens, hundreds, millions; scrambling, embracing, piling up on itself. Find a rock, the rock is covered in flora, there's a big fish or ten. Each big fish has a squadron of little fish, Tie Fighters to its Star Destroyer. Move closer, there are a hundred anemones on the rock; each anemone is an apartment building, housing a paparazzi of tenants. Big, medium, small, mini, microscopic. Life down to a pinhead. On a reef, there could be a thousand individual life forms within a meter of you. Extend the radius to ten meters, it's a million or more.
The Movement
It takes time. We're not comfortable underwater. Humans weren't designed to swim, we were designed to walk. We don't have gills, so we need to carry back-breaking loads of bulky metal and plastic to survive. Hoses, straps, buckles, handles, sheaths. Buoyancy control is tricky. But once you have it, it's magic. Smooth liquid flight. Weightlessness. A dance on three axes. Every form is possible, allowing every viewing perspective. Upside down, back to front. The art is in knowing the shapes you need to throw to get from now to there, a Rubik's cube puzzle of movement. Red, click, green, click, blue face formed. Viola. A graceful joy to watch and perform.
The Disconnection
There are no mobile phones underwater. You never come back into range at fifteen metres under. If you're on a boat a hundred miles out in the middle of the Coral Sea, it doesn't even come back when you step aboard.
The Peace
You're on the ocean, in the ocean, the ocean covers three quarters of the planet. You cannot be more at one with, and at the mercy of our blue and green orb.
Finally
Sometimes, just sometimes, the whales are singing. An ancient pulse: clear, majestic, heart breakingly beautiful. You come back up and smiles fill the boat, water streams from salty hair, you can't stop smiling, and you all try to describe what you're feeling and the words trip over themselves, falling out in a rush, but nothing can quite capture it.
So you stop talking, and you smile, as the engine kicks you landward for the last time, the sunset hits your face, and it's all right there in that single moment. All of life - right there.