I had avoided this pastime until now for a single reason. It was in its own way like golf, which I abhor, not for the difficulty of the skills required to play well but for all the noisome baggage that goes with the game: the lingo with its yards of cliches, the “fashions,” the bravado, the equipment, and the endless gab. The same holds for scuba. The divers seem to parade a macho that is hardly deserved, just for getting wet. They wear K-bar knives strapped on their calves like commandos; impossibly large watches on their wrists with seemingly silly gadgets like digital compasses. They decorate their skin with tattoos, carry themselves with a para-military swagger, brag about reefs they have visited and encounters with dangerous fish, and so on.
On this trip, though, scuba seemed inevitable at one point or another. We have visited some of the world’s best diving sites in Central America, Africa and Asia (especially Indonesia and Thailand). Diving was the reason we chose Australia at all; we did not come here for the Aborigines, Ayers Rock or boomerangs. Charlie wanted to go under water to look at the Great Barrier Reef. We went out on a boat, and the air tanks were lined up on the rails, with a dive instructor waiting for the call to action. I decided to give it a go. I will never look back.
First off, it’s as easy as breathing, which I do well by now often without even thinking about it, and scuba requires no more effort than floating, which I can also do all day.
What astonished me, diving turns you into a child again, and that is welcome and wonderful if not just miraculous. There is a whole new world open to terrestrial folks under the waves as different as a visit to Venus. This was a whole different experience from snorkelling–I’d compare it to the Cheap Seats versus the Owner’s Sky Box. It’s that good, and that amazingly different.
I have never been close to any fish except ones served on a plate with parsley, or hanging on a hook. By diving you can actually invade their privacy. This revives a childlike need to touch. You really need to run your hand along the slimy side of a fish like a wrasse to get its full measure, and the wrasse for me weighed about 60 pounds and became my shadow as I stopped to look closely at wavy and sticky corals, the sand, the really giant clams. You need to concentrate on the small things, like a child, too. I got my mask about an inch from a wavy, noodle-like coral that was home to three Clown fish about the length of my little finger. This new perspective utterly fascinated me, and I’m not a great fan of aquariums either. Down at about 30 feet below the surface, life was smooth. I was on my back looking up at the sun shining down in brilliant rays. I felt hidden and alone and quite happy, breathing in and blowing bubbles out. The layers were fantastic! Seeing swimmers above me, way above me near the surface, was a perspective I had never enjoyed. And then there was a sense of frisson, of getting lost, snaring my gear on rocks and corals, giant clams, the Bends, even the possibility on the Great Barrier Reef of coming across a creature with a desire to sample me. I’m going to see about buying one of those knives divers strap to their legs.
