I swam in a galaxy.
All around me, as close and as far as I could see, blue sparks pulsed in and out of existence – small specks of light in an otherwise endless dark. Silence, broken only by the soft exhalation of air moving through water, enveloped me. Green sparks, meshing in an unpredictable dance with the blue, traced my every movement. I floated, bubbles of excitement occasionally bursting from my regulator. My head turned in all directions as I tried to crystallize in memory the swirling constellations.
Then, a blue spark appeared right in front of my mask, followed by another just below it and then another, the series forming a contracting coil of ephemeral lights – and I stopped moving, and stared.
~
The blue sparks dimmed as we made our ascent, and the chime of water accompanied us as we surfaced. White lights illuminated the dark canvas above us as green bioluminescence continued to twirl below us.
“That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced,” one of my students said as she climbed up the transom, her voice cutting through the splash of the Caribbean Sea lapping hungrily against our boat’s hull. She – like all of us – could not stop smiling, and her hazel-green eyes were wide and twinkling as frankly as the stars.
Our group of eight spent the next two hours, unable to sleep despite an imminent wakeup, huddled around the wooden table that took up half of our saloon. We drank watered down lukewarm chocolate and tried to recount the dive we had just shared, our laughter and incredulity interlacing.
~
The beauty and absurdity of bioluminescence – of (often) tiny creatures, unpretentious yet majestic, doing what we, humans, could not dream of doing: creating light – always humbles me. But the ostracods’ mating display, their spiraling dance of blue light, surpassed anything I had seen before.
And watching my students exult in these microscopic crustacean’s splendor only heartened me more. Their falling in love with these little organisms, rather than the characteristic sharks or turtles, symbolized a cementing of their love for the ocean. Over the next few days, as discussions of ostracods weaved into almost all of our conversations, they came to understand how countless life forms, from invisible plankton to imposing whale sharks, intertwine to form marine ecosystems. They came to appreciate how all organisms, even those that seem most mundane or most ugly (after all, when seen under a microscope, ostracods look like nightmarish, translucent creepy-crawlies) have inherent magic – be it the galaxy they create through their breeding behavior or simply their contribution to a biological community.
~
But something nagged at me as I put my equipment away, shivering in the night winds that sweep through the coastal waters on the west side of Saba. Something nags at me every time I dive or teach diving. I love introducing people to the underwater world, I love showing them a new part of our earth. But teaching diving also always feels, to some extent, wrong. Although diversity and access issues are all-too-real throughout the outdoors, few activities signal ‘privilege’ as plainly as scuba diving. The prohibitive expense of gear and travel, the fact that a majority of divers are white, and the stark reality that most dive sites pepper coastlines that were stolen or colonized all mark the profound inequity of the sport.
The whole history of diving is rife with controversy. Put bluntly, a group of affluent white people, the most famous of whom – the revered Jacque Cousteau – was a French naval officer, came together and invented machinery that would allow us to conquer what many saw as the last frontier for humanity: the underwater world. Cousteau, working alongside engineer Émile Gagnan, designed the first safe open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba), allowing divers to reach new depths and spend more time below the surface.
The two men empowered people to invade any and all bodies of water; they created technology to encroach on more and more of nature’s spaces. Their invention allowed military forces around the globe to engage in combat diving (which, despite the name, does not involve slow-motion, submerged fighting; combat divers perform engineering tasks underwater, supporting military operations). It enabled already hegemonic oil conglomerates to exploit new reserves of petroleum in deep, offshore seabeds. And it gave careless tourists the ability to systematically demolish thousand-year-old coral reefs with fins, hands, and poorly secured equipment and to terrify marine creatures the world over.
~
The first time I went diving, everything was brown. Suspended sand particles floated lazily in murky water. We were barely eight meters deep, yet only faint sunlight reached us. The healthy reef systems that had once inhabited this area of the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Dubai, had been destroyed by massive dredging efforts to build artificial islands and expand beaches. Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, we didn’t see a single animate sea creature.
And I loved it. I loved having every inch of my body touched by water. I loved entering a new soundscape of muffled, distorted, and suffused sounds. I loved watching familiar materials behave entirely differently in liquid.
Less than two minutes into this first dive, the eleven-year-old me resolved to do everything she could to experience this – the magic of being underwater – again and again. And her resolve stuck: Although I have always had nebulous, evolving hopes and aspirations that give direction to my life, becoming a dive instructor is the only concrete dream I’ve ever had. Seven years after my first dive, I fulfilled this dream. Price was no longer a constraint; I could actually make money while diving, and I had the chance to spend two and a half summers sharing this passion with teenagers from all over the world. I worked as a Divemaster and then Open Water Scuba Instructor for Broadreach, a company that runs experiential summer adventures for middle school, high school, and college students.
The programs I co-led lasted twelve to twenty-four days. We – twelve students, two instructors, and one skipper – lived on a catamaran, sailing, hiking, and diving our way through the Leeward Islands. Our days were filled with sunrise wakeups, ocean showers, and stormy sails; with abandoning dishes halfway through doing them to jump in the water and free dive with curious remoras; with vinegar poured on jelly fish stings and antibiotic ointment liberally lathered to ward off staph infections; with the eternal servicing of broken compressors and leaking freshwater tanks and faulty regulators; and, of course, with feasts of cold canned corn and peas and tortillas garnished with sriracha because we had run out of propane, again.
The months I spent living on the water are the happiest I’ve experienced. Nothing beats waking up to warm light and tinkling waves and watching a fiery sunset as you brush your teeth, the deck of the boat swaying beneath your feet. But a huge part of why these months felt so perfect hinged on the fact that I could spend a quarter of my day underwater, where social norms and conventional means of communication drift away.
~
Having grown up in six different countries, none of which are my parents’ countries of origin, I have no idea where I ‘come from.’ I moved too often to feel comfortable claiming any national or cultural identity. The end result is that I’m awkward and shy in essentially all social settings; I never know what I should say or do, and my intentions rarely come off as expected. Any chance to escape norms and conventions, therefore, is a blessing. And few places offer a better opportunity to do so than underwater, where we all fall back on physical communication. Not one of us is in a familiar cultural or social context. We are just humans, each as clueless as the next as we meander through a world that is not our own.
Although this escape from society is most pronounced underwater, it happens whenever I am in nature; it is the reason why I constantly crave and seek the outdoors. The wild seems not imbued with any cultural or social constructs, and the wild is the only place where I feel like I seamlessly fit in. When people ask me where ‘home’ is, I answer ‘I don’t know.’ But the truth is that I do know: Home is in blue-green waves crisscrossed with webs of foam. It’s in stacks of slate-gray rocks that almost imperceptibly seem to sway beneath the glassy surface of alpine lakes; in clear water, dappled in light, eddying but still restless as it falls prey to a curve in the riverbank. Home is in warm sand crumbling on my toes and cold sand painfully pricking the soles of my feet and in snow-blanketed forests, silent and serene.
Home is also in kelp mazes and coral cathedrals and undulating blue dancing with twirling rays of sun that diffuse into the water. Nowhere is more like home than the ocean. No place makes me feel more whole.
But, sometimes, feeling whole starts to feels hollow.
Am I allowed to claim any of these places or sights as home? The empty forests and quiet mountains I find my calm in were probably stolen from people who were then pushed to the margins of ‘society.’ The coastal waters in which my worries seem to dissolve once sustained entire communities – communities now dispossessed, navigating a world they did not construct yet have likely lost so much to.
As an International Relations student minoring in Human Rights, I spent the last four years of my life learning about the seemingly endless and intractable problems our world faces and feeling utterly powerless, helpless, and, most of all, useless in enacting change as I continue to live in privilege. For a long time, it seemed that in nature I could evade these feelings and the questions they engender.
Now, however, being in nature only magnifies the feelings and questions because I know that nature is deeply imbued with social constructs; nature is exclusionary, and the history of most ‘wild’ places is also a history of dispossession and suffering and injustice. Now, even in doing human rights-related work, I feel like a fraud; I feel like hypocrisy permeates all of my actions because I have the freedom to escape to the granite walls and sapphire lakes of the Sierras or to coastal canyons filled with redwoods wreathed in mist or to the south swells that undulate through the Pacific and come crashing, in flawless lines, on the coast of California. Because I have the freedom to briefly escape our fragmenting world and to swim in a galaxy.
~
But though the history of diving is controversial and the act of diving is a manifestation of inequality, Cousteau is revered for a reason. He was an avid environmentalist and his work continues to inspire generations of ocean lovers. Through his photography and films, he showcased the marvels of the underwater world to millions of people, hoping to galvanize their support to protect marine ecosystems around the globe. In 1960, he successfully led a popular campaign against the French government’s plan to dump nuclear waste into the Mediterranean Sea. He also worked with heads of state for years to help the International Whaling Commission pass the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling, which remains in place today.
Fifty years after Cousteau’s invention, scuba diving continues to serve as a foundational aspect of ocean conservation. Documentaries, research, and reef restoration programs all rely on scuba. With diving, scientists have brought to light the devastating effects of rising ocean temperatures and acidity on corals; the collapse of fisheries from overfishing and ecological destruction; the disappearance of seagrasses and whales and otters.
And protecting one of our world’s most valuable resources, ocean conservation, in the long run, will serve not only the most privileged but also the most vulnerable; food security and ocean health are intricately linked, and the risks to large swaths of humanity of climate change-induced sea level rise are clear. Marine conservation, therefore, is an essential piece of solving the enormous puzzles of environmental and intergenerational justice.
Diving also serves as a medium for people to, quite literally, immerse themselves in the wild. Through teaching, I have seen people who once hated the feeling of dried, crusty saltwater on their face fall fully in love with the ocean. I have seen people, young and old, gain new understandings of themselves and start to think more deeply about their relationship to the world. I have seen them stare in reverence at tiny, flamboyant nudibranchs. But how can we harness the transformative potential of diving while knowing that every aspect of our experience is imbued with historical and present-day injustice?
~
Alongside a tiny piece of the St. Kitts coastline, there is a dive site full of treasures. Boats often moor or anchor there, but few people jump off to explore the tumble of boulders and patchy reef that slopes gently below the water, escaping the shadows of the gray cliffs and green vegetation above. They don’t realize, then, when their forks and knives slide down their transom or their drying towels fly off with a gust of morning wind or when one of them drunkenly drops a beer bottle into the water.
Most other Broadreach instructors don’t even bother taking their students on a dive here. The reef is too dead, they say. The site is too shallow and too quickly turns into sand. There is rarely any “interesting” marine life, like sharks or rays. But I love this site. I love how you can find corals tucked in small cervices between rocks. I love the rippling patterns waves create on the “boring” sand. I love the fish that disappear into a cloud of this sand before you have a chance to see them.
What I love most about this dive site, however, is the treasure-trove of trash – the beam on my student’s face when she picks up a pair of sunglasses crusted with algae and places them over her mask, bubbles of glee bursting from her regulator; the determination with which another student wrestles into a giant pair of silt-filled boardshorts. We do cleanup dives elsewhere, but none are ever as fruitful as the ones in St. Kitts. We are always all giggling when we breach the surface, decked out in our trash attires.
~
But though trash might be a treasure to us in that moment, it represents a dire reality: the coral reefs of the Caribbean are dying. Some have been ravaged by invasive lionfish. Some have succumbed to prolonged increases in water temperature. Some have been destroyed by pollutants and runoff from land. Some have literally been kicked into nonexistence by negligent divers.
Resolute, indefatigable people throughout the Caribbean (and the world) have taken it upon themselves to save these reefs or, if some are beyond saving, to build new ones. And these reef-fighters, protectors, and advocates have developed myriad approaches to their task. Some build coral nurseries. Some – with forethought – sink wrecks that can serve as the structure for new reefs. And some educate tourists and local populations about environmentally-conscious diving, sailing, snorkeling, fishing, and agricultural practices. No single one of these people, however, can save all Caribbean reefs; rather, each approach is valuable, and, collectively, they can lead to change.
At Broadreach, we teach our students to dive respectfully. We ask them to reflect on the fact that we are visiting islands that are not ours – to be mindful of and grateful to the people allowing us into their home. We give lessons on marine biology and ocean conservation, such that they can better know and protect the world they are discovering.
The Caribbean reef systems, in turn, are a microcosm of our world. No one person or entity or country can tackle the innumerable and interlinked problems faced by both humanity and the planet we call home. But each approach, each attempt – if genuine and thoughtful and deliberate and malleable – matters.
The way to save our reefs isn’t to forbid any and all access to them – that would be counterproductive, as people would never see nor interact with what they are fighting to save. It isn’t to try and isolate these reefs from the rest of the world – that would be impossible, as everything is inextricably connected. In the same way, ending all diving – at least, until the possibility of equity in the sport is reached – seems neither feasible nor productive. Too much net good – from immersion in the wild, from scientific research, and from non-extractive, sustainable revenue for coastal populations around the world – would be lost.
I still struggle to navigate the deep, turbulent waters of diving – its transformative potential, its exclusionary nature, its nefarious applications. Good can come from scuba, and we can seek to harness that good. But we can’t forget how the past permeates the present. We can do our best to rectify the inequities in diving[EP10] , knowing that every effort matters. But we have to acknowledge that rectification might take centuries, or never happen. We can share our passions, we can ponder the insanity of crustacean-created galaxies, and we can touch the lives of others.
~
Ryan and I descended into an inky blackness. Our dive torches were off, so as not to attract the sea wasps that thrive in the shallow waters we were passing through. All I could see was filtered moonlight glistening off of the bubbles periodically rising up from Ryan’s regulator – bubbles that were appearing a little too often, his rapid breathing a reflection of his anxiety.
This certainly wasn’t the most comforting night dive setting. The dinghy ride over to the mooring had taken us fifteen minutes – fifteen minutes of bouncing on choppy waters. Fifteen minutes of being cloaked in a darkness that swallowed up the meager light I tried to shine to avoid wrapping our prop in stray lines and buoys. Fifteen minutes of hoping our little dinghy wouldn’t break down, as she so often did, leaving us to drift off into the night, unable to contact anyone because our radios never seemed to work on this stretch of ocean.
Clouds blotted out the stars and gave the lunar light that leaked through an ominous cast. Before we jumped in, I reminded Ryan that he didn’t have to do this dive. Importantly, he couldn’t panic once we were below the surface; a rapid ascent could kill him. He understood. He looked me in the eyes, took a deep breath, and back-rolled into the water, immediately grabbing on to the straps on the side of our dinghy, so as not to drift off with the ripping currents that characterize this area. I followed him in and we made our way to the mooring line.
Ryan is the youngest student I’ve taught. At just eleven, he was almost two years younger than all of the other students on the trip, and most of them didn’t let him forget this age gap easily. They would taunt him as he struggled to walk with a heavy tank on his back and when he put his regulator on the wrong way. They made fun of him because he read fish identification books instead of playing cards. At the start of the program, when we jumped in to practice skills for the first time in the shallow, sandy patch of water we call Cow Pen (for ‘Confined Open Water’), he was by far the most nervous.
But by the time we reached Saba, our final stop and the island with the most stunning and challenging dive sites, he was by far the most competent diver in the group. He had gone on every dive my co-instructor, Sam, and I had offered. He and I had spent many a late night pouring over all of our marine creature I.D. books; he could identify almost everything we saw, always carefully making the correct signal with his hands. He could set up his equipment in less than two minutes – a record among all the students I’ve taught.
When I offered to lead a night dive, Ryan was the only student eager to try – and this despite the fact that I had done my best to cajole everyone into joining me because night dives open up a whole new facet of diving: night dives are when eels and octopuses leave their usual nooks to hunt; when giant spider crabs move their mandibles at impossible speeds as they munch on their midnight snacks; and when parrotfish construct bubbles of mucus to prepare for a peaceful night of sleep.
Eventually, we reached the sand, gently kneeling into the warm grains. Known as Hot Springs, this dive site is characterized by geothermally heated water seeping through the sea bottom. Incidentally, this dive site, because of its depth and its high density of soft corals, is also one the most ideal sites in the Caribbean for observing ostracods’ mating rituals.
We turned our dive lights on and the darkness around us dissolved into a world of vibrant colors: Coral stacks, adorned with giant barrel sponges, swaying sea fans, and gently luminescent anemones, created a maze, which we started weaving through, occasionally finding sleeping Spotted Drumfish or wide-eyed Red Squirrelfish or filter-feeding basket stars that slowly, deliberately retracted from our light, their beguiling branches folding into each other as they did so.
After a few minutes, a nurse shark found us. Although I know divers are almost guaranteed to be trailed by one (or nine) nurse shark(s) when night diving at Hot Springs (because the sharks use our lights to hunt) I refuse to anticipate the encounter. Not seeing one after expecting to would be too devastating. More importantly, however, anticipating the encounter seems arrogant; nurse sharks have their own agenda, and being there for divers to gawk at is not part of it.
But we were lucky. And this nurse shark was hungry. For the next forty minutes, it followed us, intermittently disappearing from our radius of light only to reappear right under us. At certain points, I would only have had to let my hand drop half an inch to graze my fingers against its sandpaper skin.
As it swam over the reef, the shark moved through an infinity of curves. Every so often, however, it would break its graceful undulation and bury its head in the coral or sand, shaking violently as it fought to capture prey (the first time I saw a shark do this, it kept its head in a coral crevice for upwards of ten minutes, launching me into frantic signals as I attempted to ask my co-instructor if our fish friend was stuck; she, at the same time, was miming gnawing on food as she tried to communicate that the shark was hunting). I watched Ryan’s wide, curious eyes throughout the dive, smiling as I saw him try to take everything in.
The shark stayed with us until we turned off our lights to begin our ascent. As soon as our heads breached the surface, Ryan burst into a happy laughter, mildly choking on water as he exclaimed, “I can’t believe it! We saw, like, FOURTEEN SHARKS!” It took me a second to process what had happened; Ryan, probably in part because he was so enraptured by other new sights during the dive, hadn’t realized that the many sharks that appeared and disappeared as we explored Hot Springs were all one and the same: a singular shark.
I didn’t break it to him until we were on our way back, hunched over as we tried to stay warm and still praying that our dinghy wouldn’t putter into uselessness. Although he was, understandably, disappointed that we hadn’t seen ‘FOURTEEN SHARKS!’, Ryan was still the happiest I’d ever seen him.
A grin spread across my face when a week later, as I sat down to drink water and read emails after a day of restocking boats with way too many cans of chicken, I opened up an email from Ryan that read, “I was so excited when I found a dive center in my town and I am enrolling in an advanced diving program after Christmas!” He finished off with “P.S… I’m sorry if this email is a little random and might come out as rude, to talk to an adult by email, but I really wanted to share this with my PADI dive instructor. Hope to see you next year!!”
A radiant warmth settled in my stomach, not from the lukewarm water in my Nalgene, but because another eleven-year old had fallen in love with the ocean.
