or: People Above Water Are Not The Same As People Underwater

One of the 974 things I like about scuba diving is the transformation of people.

On land, some move easily, some are more labourious. Some are chatty and others are quiet. Some are shy and others are social butterflies. Some are fit and others are not. Some are at the top of the corporate ladder, others aren’t working or are on holidays. Some are stressed, others are the opposite.

Diving is a great leveler.

Underwater, everyone can move with relative ease once they relax. It is not possible to talk. The only interaction is with your dive buddy as you point out things of interest, update them on your air consumption etc. There is no flitting about the ocean trying to meet everyone. You’ve already done this at the dive centre or on the boat.

Everyone is quiet.

Sounds of bubbles indicate breathing. Your own is a little louder as you can hear the air going through the regulator into your mouthpiece and it being sucked into your mouth and lungs. From others, just the sounds of bubbles unless you’re swimming very close to them.

Depending on your depth, you may hear the occasional boat.

If you’re really lucky, you could hear dolphins or whales.

Everyone can float.

Lying horizontally with your buoyancy adjusted with air in your jacket / BCD according to your own weight and depth, it is possible to just “hang” there, floating. No movement is necessary.

This must be what being in space feels like.

Slow scissor kicks propel you forward or a gentle frog kick if you prefer. To each their own. Nothing is done in a hurry.

Everything is calm.

If you choose to listen, the fish themselves can be quite noisy. They chatter. They grind algae from corals and some even grind the coral. Parrotfish are experts at this as it seems like it goes in one end and straight out the other.  You can tune into this sound if you choose. Otherwise it’s white noise that you won’t notice.

Watching the fish swim around, having a wash at a nearby cleaning station with the various industriuous cleaner wrasse (they always seem to hang out in pairs – it’s like cleaning a car, one will do the outside and the other does the inside or one will do the front and the other does the back), or being able to observe them feeding or their mating behaviour is relaxing.

You can learn a lot by observing, particularly when you regularly go to the same places over a long period of time.

The whole experience can be quite meditative.

For me, I like to help people learn about the different fish so I have been chatting with those that are interested before each dive. We discuss which fish we will focus on for the dive, the characteristics of each particular focus fish and what to watch out for. We then dive and I’ll point them out until they can do it themselves. It’s great to see them being able to correctly identify what they are looking at. Diving like this is even more relaxing as we’re focused on watching specific fish and can hang out in the one area for a little while observing their behaviors.

I especially like it when they get excited about correctly identifying a fish they first learnt some time ago and haven’t seen in a while or when they remember what a new fish looks like, can identify the species by some key indicators and can explain it well enough for me to be able to figure out what kind of fish it was and show them a picture in our fish book and share more information about that one.

It’s rewarding for me and I’m so impressed with their commitment to learning and retaining this information.

Back on the boat – the calm from underwater somehow transfers. As equipment is being dismantled, everyone excitedly talks about what they have seen – even the shy people can’t hold back from discussing an octopus changing colour, a stingray, a barracuda or their first shark. In my group, some now discuss about the particular types of fish they saw and what they were doing.

Most have lost their stress or are, at the least, calmer.

Most (normally all) will have enjoyed their freedom of movement.

Just being underwater is liberating.

* Thanks to Ed Sheeran for the title to this post.