We bob like clumsy flotsam on the surface, neoprene wrapped, tank-backed, weighted and waiting for the sign to descend, to exhale and sink below the swimmers, floats and boats. Here we escape the sun’s glare and heat.
Breathe
Our expended air ascends above us in sheets of bubbles. Knees make touch-down on the sand, hands signal, make an O with thumb and forefinger before we begin. Balanced, we rise and sink with each inhalation. Above, the waves roll over and we are gently rocked, caressed, soothed. Smooth movements only are allowed here. Fins extended straight behind or frog-kick in slow motion. Stately. Hands behind our backs or clasped in front, trimmed and unobtrusive.
Reef fish nibble weed, flashing bright between the rocks, flighty. Pink, turquoise, orange, cobalt blue: the colours of a sweetshop window. Light flashes and we are surrounded by sudden dizzying swirl of shoaling silver orbiting. In the misty blue amberjack and tuna hunt. Great, grey shapes of shark haunt the deeper reef. Somewhere out there dolphin click, whistle, contact-call.
Swim
Follow-my-leader along the weedy wall to where the land opens its mouth to drink the ocean. Hands reach into pockets, turn beams of bottled light onto the cave walls. Phosphorescence, purple, red, yellow; sponges; orange starfish; nudibranch bloom like delicate flowers in the dark.
Funnel up towards the light and break through the surface into startling blue, feel air on our faces, breath air that smells like a stone church. Lie back and float like sea-otters. Light pours through chinks in the dome of rock and the water glows like a test tube of copper sulphate. Our voices are hushed here and echo in the vast and unexpected space.
Return
Wide mouth of cave opens to daylight and float our way serene, scanning the weed for the curious curl of seahorses. An octopus peers from its hiding place, pulls an oyster shell across its threshold. A chameleon cuttlefish hovers, shimmers and shoots away leaving a trail of gunmetal ink.
Ascend
In the shock of sounds and sunlight, we are heavy, lumbering turtles turned upside down. On shore, we slough off encumbering weights, unpeel ourselves, dripping on the dusty ground, uncertain where we truly belong.
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