On the rocking ship with 20 pounds of equipment on my back, looking down to the sea below full of wondrous creatures, I closed my eyes, held my breath, and plunged into the ocean with fear and excitement in my pocket. Underwater everything seems to go slower, my body and my mind, everything but the fast moving, fast paced fish of the sea. At first I felt tense and frightened but quickly adapted to this new environment. This world was so new and magnificent; everything was unique and different but strangely similar. The seaweed and other sea grass that I had never seen before were always swaying like grass does when there is a breeze, clown fish darting in and out of anemones, like squirrels scurrying in and out of the safety of their trees. There were plants that looked alive, as if they would at any moment stand up and swim away like a jellyfish. There were eels lurking in the depths of their burrows in the rock walls, sting rays drifting along the ocean’s bottom, and fish with every color of the rainbow darting around looking for food.
I was aroused from my tranquil thoughts by several splashes and three other figures sinking down to my level, with the same amount of gear and the same suits. These other figures were my two brothers and my father. I looked back towards our instructor who had been in the water awhile because it took him a lot less time to put on the equipment than it took us. We were wearing big silver air tanks obviously used before with all the rust on them, a black mouth piece, a special life jacket and a pressure gauge. He made a few signals and started to swim away, while I stayed there motionless, suspended in the ever swaying water like an astronaut drifting in space, trying to remember all the training I had to go through to get to this wondrous scene in the first place.
I remembered sitting in the small classroom with the baby blue walls and an old small TV in the corner. Little grey rusty chairs, old whiteboards on each desk and our teacher in front of us. Our teacher was Malaysian with black hair and dark skin. He helped us through our textbooks, and studying for the test. Everyone passed except my little brother. It looked like he was crying rivers. After he got over his failure and went back to the textbook he passed the next time. I tried to remember reading the turquoise book, the cursed turquoise book. I tried flipping through my memories like flipping through my horribly boring text book. I tried to remember the chapter on hand signals. I put all the signals together and realized our guide was signaling to follow him. I was jostled out of my flashback by a tap on my shoulder by a figure wearing a jet black diving suit and big goggles that covered his face. After a pause of confusion I realized it was my dad, who was trying to signal me to swim down. I deflated my controllable life jacket a bit so I could float down to the depths of the ocean.
I looked around in amazement at the multi-colored coral and the fish that almost blended together, as if they were part of the same organism. Once we were down at the lowest level, we started floating along the rocky bottom; the sand was coarse and dark, there were saddening dead brown coral scattered along the bottom. But I saw the breathe-taking groups of plants brimming with life where more towards the top. I was a bit disappointed at first because I thought I was going to miss all the vibrant fish and all the other astonishing creatures of the sea. But when I bumped into my father in front of me, because I was looking above me with eyes full of envy at some other divers at the top with all the sea life, I saw with astonishment a huge arch of rock covered in what seemed like dead moss in front of us. What was even more astonishing instead of stopping and going up and around the rock, to look at all the beautiful sea life, we glided through the arch and I was expecting boring rock and lichen. But when I swam into the arch it seemed if I had just stepped through a portal to some underwater marvel. The scenery was extraordinary and the critters were even more incredible. I had never seen half of these creatures, some were dark and some were colorful, some were herbivores and some were carnivores, some were tiny and some were frighteningly large, some were shy and some swam right up to us. There were fish camouflaged against rocks like how chameleons hide on leafs, there fish striped like zebras and fish spotted like jaguars.
After a long period of exploring this new wondrous place it was time to depart because of our low oxygen in our old, grey, rusty air tanks. The guide signaled us to follow him and we slowly lifted up. I felt like a rocket ship in slow-motion, slowly ascending straight up using my fire red flippers. Once we broke the surface, we immediately took out our mouth pieces and chattered excitedly about our experiences with the underwater world.
No comments:
Post a Comment