Being watched in the Ocean

I've been diving a lot. South Africa, the Canary Islands, around the UK. I must have about 80 hours logged. So I'm no stranger to it. Yet one dive I had whilst on holiday in the Maldives last October was very different and eerie. Thinking back to it still gives me this chilling gut feeling, even a year later.

Often when you're down under, diving that is, you think you see things. The sunlight dissipating in the distance hitting and distorting objects far away as you reach depth. Or rock outcrops in the distance that look like animals or figures. Even the shadows that seem to move as the current does.

It's safe to say that the water and the marine environment can really scare you sometimes. Often playing tricks on the mind.

I've seen what I thought was large 'things' moving in the distance, and on a closer look just turned out to be a large colony of soft-bodied corals. Or I've been convinced that something was watching me, and in hindsight probably lots of fish and critters were. The fact is that the marine environment is such an Alien, unfamiliar environment to our brains, and sometimes we don't know how to process the unknown.

That's what happened on a routine dive over a coral reef in the Maldives with my dive buddy Sophie, and our guide Nina.

Everything as far as the eye could see was dead, sadly a bleaching event had occurred a couple of years prior leading all the once beautiful corals to expel their ph0tosysntehtic producing algae from their tissues, resulting in death. Fish and a few hardy coral species remained, but I suspect in fewer numbers than once before.

Yet amongst all the death, there was this one small outcrop of life, right at the edge of the reef.

I swam over to it and admired the pairs of bright orange anemonefish, posturing in defence as if they thought I was there to take what was theirs. Massive anemones, the biggest I've ever seen, flowing gracefully in the current providing sanctuary for others. I remember thinking how beautiful it was, that even despite all the death that surrounded, life continued.

Then I looked past this boulder of life and saw what was behind it. A sense of eeriness washed over me whilst I was hovering there. I realised that the drop behind was immense. That I couldn't see the bottom, even in the bright midday sun. It seemed unending.

I remember curiously swimming over the edge of the reef for two reasons. One, to see if there were any more anemones on its edge, hiding the marine life that I craved to see. Two, as a test to myself.

'how long could I stomach it'.

How long could I bare floating above the unknown? Completely alone and exposed. The seemingly unending blue with hues of darkness that chilled even me, a marine biology student.

Wild irrational thoughts of what might be down there, or what if I fell, or If I'm being watched from below washed over me with no sign of calming. I got panicked. Scared even.

That's the thing about diving, the emotional somatic state to it. Down there you can't speak, all you can see its what's right in front you, narrowed down by the confines of your diving mask and narrowed even further by your understanding of the habitat. All you can hear is the ocean, muffled by the sounds of your breathing. Yet your thoughts, those are loud. Louder than ever. That's what scares you more than the unknown, your own thoughts.

I didn't last floating there above the blue, before long I was back to the safety, and the known, of the reef. I knew what was there, in that case, nothing. Yet that was a comfort. Even being in a reef of carcasses was still a comfort from that chilling feeling I had that I was being watched from below.

What's "so scary" about this particular dive you might be asking yourself? The fish? The dead corals? The drop? No. It wasn't until after the dive when I looked through the photos I took that I realised something in the background had indeed been watching me. I wasn't convincing myself.

It looks like a human-like figure, with a diving mask on. At first, I thought it was my buddy Sophie or even Nina. Then I realised at that point in the dive that this photo was taken they were behind me. Plus, it couldn't have been them as no bubbles are coming from any breathing apparatus. Then I thought it's just some rocks, shaped in a human shape. Yet that doesn't explain the black parts coming out of the 'body'. To explain that I thought perhaps it was seaweed or some type of brown algae clinging to some rock. Yet what troubles me still is that nothing matching that description was anywhere near. Even in all the photos, you can't see anything like that. To this day I still don't know what exactly it was.

I've come to think of it as a guardian of some sorts, something standing watch to protect that last small outcrop of life, on the boulder in front. Maybe I disturbed the area by getting too close, and so it emerged? Or maybe it's just some spookily placed rocks? Either way, it scared the hell of out of me when I first saw it. By figure or by rock I knew, I bloody knew something was watching me on that dive.