Vision Going Blue

Diving every day twice a day for weeks, does something to your brain. Of course there’s the combined weight of the atmospheric and depth’s pressure, that tires you silly. Waking up from my afternoon nap at six PM has become my biggest challenge, which is to say: Life is good. The other physical markers of diving can be gleaned from a quick body scan: the distinct short wetsuit tan line on my arms and legs, rapidly peeling fingertips and cuticles, as well as the small scar on my left ring finger and the red bumps on my right knee which despite my very best effort both come from a love tap with coral. 

I begin all my days on Koh Tao––a small island off the east coast of Thailand––with a sip of instant coffee before setting out for the dive shop’s classroom. Each morning, we are briefed on a new topic: coral growth forms, fish species, invertebrate identification, disease, pollution, navigation, buoyancy control. Amongst the chaos that ensues after class finishes, chatting with the ten ecology interns, listening to our instructors diving plan, loading taxis, sitting in the bed of the pick up, jumping across boats, snacking on samosas, setting up tanks, checking air, preparing the BCD, connecting all the wires, adding weights to the belt, checking, double checking, I crave the silence. 

There is a nearly indescribable feeling that overtakes every inch of me when I begin to sink below the surface. Holding the deflator above my head, squeezing the air out of my vest, tightening the straps, until I finally extend and focus solely on the sound of my breath. Arms and legs wide, I bask in my vision going blue. Depending on the visibility and depth of the dive site this infinite blue goes on for a series of breaths––the only measure of time underwater––before I begin to make out the outline of coral shelves, or a school of fish; before I remember I should be watching my instructor.

I’ll admit to you, there has been one continuous piece of feedback from my dive instructors: pay better attention. No matter how hard I try to be mindful underwater, the ocean is full of too many wonderful distractions. On my first dive, it was the sea urchins. I had no idea the spiky creatures had such vibrant colors past their black spins! If you look closely–but not too close–you will see one brilliant yellow circle surrounded by smaller neon blue rings. I learned later the big yellow dots I was completely mesmerized by were in fact the urchin's anus. On my third dive, my dive instructor caught me scaring Christmas tree worms. The worms look exactly how they sound AND they come in every color. To scare them, you must slowly and smoothly hover close enough (a task that is harder than it sounds as everything appears more than 20% closer underwater) before making a sudden movement causing them to retreat into their submassive coral. I stopped doing this near dive number ten because as my eco dive instructor Jade put it, “Imagine being a Christmas tree worm everyday taunted and terrorized by divers!” On dive five, I got carried away doing front flips around the bar in “Buoyancy World” as part of our advanced “explorer” certification. After one too many times upside down I couldn’t shake anxious thoughts of bubbles stuck in veins, which would of course expand as I would ascend until they’d explode and kill me. Thankfully these thoughts, intrusive and irrational, subsided when I surfaced alive and beaming. On dive seven, I was shocked when my instructor swam through the shipwreck corridor “you can do anything I do” he had said just before going underwater, so I followed him trying not to get distracted by the mysteriously dark corridors. It took everything to focus on my breath, to remain neutrally buoyant. I whisper a few prayers for good measure. It was the night dive however when distraction drove me the closest to disaster. As the sun set, the anxiety creeped in. Those around assured me the night dive would be “relaxing, meditative even”. If you consider flashing your torch and spotting massive, ancient-looking groupers every five minutes meditative, then sure. Despite ourselves, my buddy Elli and I decided to follow the massive grouper and when we awoke from our joint trance, we weren’t sure which distant light belonged to our instructor. Thankfully we happened to guess right!

Besides frequent distractions in the underwater world there have been many periods of intense focus. On dive 30 the entire group hovered, removing drupella snails with tweezers from Acropora coral (because those drupella snails love eating coral). My focus was broken only by the clinks of my instructor's tank. I saw everyone pointing, my eyes frantically scanned until I finally caught sight of the shimmering black and white rope: a sea snake. Like everyone else, I started to drift closer, that is, until it started coming in my direction. I held my breath and began to rapidly float upwards, heart racing. I prayed it wouldn't strike me. The sea snake is incredibly venomous but thankfully incredibly uninterested in biting any of us. Once it was out of sight, I happily returned my attention to picking out the snails with tweezers—I kid you not one of the most fun things I’ve ever done underwater. It wasn’t until my 31st dive, after three weeks of living on “Turtle Island” or “Koh Dtao,” that I finally saw my first sea turtle! It took everyone banging on their tanks once again to disrupt my scanning for crown of thorns starfish (an invasive species). With the slightest turn of my head, I spotted the turtle RIGHT above me––I visibly flinched, heart racing, until I reassured my body there was no predator overhead but rather one of the ocean’s most graceful inhabitants. 

As I reflect on my month of diving, I am most grateful that rather than solely paying to be a recreational diver, I have been able to study ecology and develop underwater skills: workshopping neutral buoyancy, transplanting coral, scrubbing algae off the artificial reef, laying tape measures, surveying an area for fish species, etc. The more I dive, the more I realize just how much I don’t know about the ocean and its creatures. Over this month-long course, I saw the sea world open up. What once was all “coral” in my eyes, branched off into various growth forms, splitting off into dozens of species. 

Someone recently asked me about my favorite emotion, to which I answered “awe”. When they asked me what makes me feel awe, I realized “well nearly everything if I am really looking.” “How lucky are you then!” And lucky I am to sink down over a pinnacle peacefully waiting for darkness to give way to schools of thousands of fish. My clipboard and pencil remain swaying at my side. I could not bring myself to count the schools, as my instructor had asked us to, not when my entire body was swallowed whole by the vastness of marine life. Awe remains something undefinable, inarticulable. As we frog kicked through the blue away from the coral reef, the only words that came to mind were “is this what it’s like to fly?”

I was living and interning on Koh Tao for the month of March 2024, during school's summer break.