Another World

                             Another World



Not wanting to give away the fact that this was my very first time, and that I was terrified, I pressed my mask tightly to my face, took a deep breath and rolled backward. I tumbled dizzily, and was engulfed by a torrent of bubbles in the crystal blue of the Caribbean. When my head stopped spinning I caught my bearings. Then I must have gulped three minutes of air in one breath, because such beauty as this didn’t exist even in my imagination! The depth gage on the boat read eighty feet. But I could see the bottom of the ocean as clearly as the bottom of my bathtub. What an incredible place for my first scuba diving trip!

My dive buddy was a seasoned diver, and my husband. He was also a talented amateur underwater photographer. The exotic creatures beneath the surface seemed to seek him out. Green eels, with mouths large enough to swallow a fist, lunged for the tidbits he offered with bare fingers. Tiny shrimp danced on the palm of his hand.  The coral fish, with strange appendages growing from his face, and a cold glare from his red eye made an imposing figure for the camera. After capturing these and many other amazing creatures, I have a precious collection of memories, pictures and slides, including one from inside a shark feeding frenzy!

By far, my favorite dive was under a full moon, a night dive. Following the soft glow of our flashlights, we submerged slowly and settled to our knees on the sandy bottom. Switching off our lights, our eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, much like entering a darkened room. A whisk of my hand through the water produced sparkling phosphorescent of rainbow colors, which was a total surprise for me!  By day we saw how the hard crusty skeletons of the corals are creating grottoes, like caverns slowly growing together. In other places the formations crop up in clusters, in a variety of sizes and shapes, creating a fascinating visual. By night soft velvety polyps emerge from them, blooming into what seems like an imaginary flower garden. Colors exposed by our flashlights, and captured by the camera’s flash, are simply unbelievable.