Thrill of the Dive

« Everyone ready ? see you below »

And with this familiar thrill of excitement, we all topple backwards into the water, letting the weight of the tank push us under water. The warm Red Sea engulfes us gradually as water rushes beneath the wetsuit. From then on, gravity takes over as each us slowly drops deeper and deeper in the blueness below alongside a wall of rich and colorful coral reef and amidst a myriad of multi-colored fish.

Even after all those dives, it never fails to fascinate me that I can be breathing underwater. The first intake of breath is always slightly awkward, but the momentary lapse between the first breath out and the next breath in is a real thrill, no matter where I dive. I get a kick out of the small things.

A quick look around, above and below allows me to locate my fellow divers and geta my bearings. Then I rest my eyes on my depth gauge all the while repeatedly popping my ears to ease the pressure on my eardrums. 10, 12, 15, 20, 25 meters… The colors on the reef slowly disappear. Red is first to go, then yellow. Everything becomes shades of blue and green.

At a depth of 32m we hit a sand plateau which partly circles the reef. Everyone reaches to inflate their BCD (Buoyancy control devices) jackets to achieve perfect buoyancy. It’s a great feeling, much like zero gravity I suspect: no longer dropping like a stone, nor rising like a balloon. With each intake of breath, you feel yourself slightly ascending but as soon as you exhale, you feel your momentum shifting towards the bottom ever so slightly.

Everyone regroups a few feet from the ground, careful not to let our fins touch or disturb the sand or any of the flora below. From then on, we peacefully and effortlessly swim outwards from the main reef wall, zig-zagging through smaller reef “sprouts” a couple meters high, to the edge of the plateau. The dive master leads the way. She knows the area like the back of her hand, having taken divers here on a weekly basis for the past 2 years. And yet aboard the ship she was still able to muster enthusiasm and excitement when presenting the dive briefing:

“possibilities of turtles and Napoleon fish, and of course, below the plateau, keep your eyes peeled: if you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse of a few hammerheads”

Hammerheads!! Hammerhead sharks of course. That’s all anyone was talking about while getting set up and ready for the dive. Excitement, anticipation. People have come to this spot specifically for this. Everyone is giddy as a schoolgirl while careful not to raise their hopes too high. If the spot has been too busy with divers recently, the sharks will have moved away no doubt. Let’s hope…

At this depth, the fish are a little more scarce and of a different variety. Other noticeable sightings include a couple blue-spotted stingrays, one quietly gliding along the sand the other burying itself beneath it, either to sleep or hunt, a few flying rascasses, a grey moreen whose head peeked out of a rock semi-menacingly, and a turtle gliding away into the blue. No doubt it must have seen us approaching. Throughout the dive we take a few safety glances at our dive computers to make sure we’re not staying too deep too long, which would force us to do safety floors on the way back up. Finally, after about 10 minutes we reach the edge of the plateau.

It’s always a pretty impressive view, or lack thereof: all of a sudden the floor disappears from under you and you’re swimming above complete blueness, the wall of the reef dropping at a steep incline into nothingness. We follow the edge of the plateau as it circles the reef counter clockwise, everyone’s eyes peeled wide open, scrutinizing the blue depths in the hopes of seeing a familiar dark shape peering out of the bottom. The edge of the plateau slowly curves upwards, and as we slowly ascend, 28 , 25 , 20 meters, letting ourselves drift with the current along the edge, we realize with slight disappointment that as we pull away from the depth, our chances of seeing hammerheads is slowly diminishing.

Pulling alongside the dive master, I give her an inquisitive hand signal : “so ?”. With her own hands she asks for my patience and signals she’s going to give them “a quick phone call”. Meanwhile I take this opportunity to focus on the reefs alongside us. "On the way upwards, the colors come back". Gold and orange fish darting through sponges and soft coral reefs that look like feathery pillows, swaying slightly with the current. I’ve seen this sight a dozen times this week but it never gets old: so much activity in those rocks. Actually, they may look like rocks, but most of these are living organisms, living in perfect symbiosis: coral, sponges, alguae, fish, plankton, it all forms one big ecosystem, each dependant on the other to survive. A fragile equilibrium often broken by humans, as sadly demonstrated by the pieces of colorless broken coral on the sand.

It’s only recently that divers have began vigorously preaching an environmental stance in their sport. With scuba diving expanding and becoming more affordable and accessible, the number of divers has dramatically increased over the years, including those that treat the ocean like it their own back door aquarium, touching everything in sight, bringing home some coral to display in their bathrooms, tampering with the fauna and disturbing its inhabitants, wrecking the fragile ecosystem along the way. The rule these days is: “watch, but don’t touch”.

A familiar clinging sound snaps me out of my reverie as the dive master knocks his knife on his tank to call our attention. He’s pointing into the blue, and there, in all its splendor, appears a white-tip shark, slowly gliding along the edge of the reef. Without as much as a look towards us, it quietly drifts past us, only a few feet away, its body swerving methodically and regularly, the tips of its fins bright against its dark grey skin. A rush of adrenaline rushes through everyone. No fear, just exhilaration, visible through everyone’s masks as we slowly ascend to the surface after an hour dive. A decent compensation for not catching the hammerheads and not a bad dive at all overall. Maybe we’ll have even more luck this afternoon ?

I cant wait to sink below once again.