Floating in a Kaleidoscope
The second dive today I found myself alone with no other divers around me. That’s not a bad thing…I enjoy solo diving. It wasn’t intentional but the two folks that went in at the same time wandered on while I floated weightless in a kaleidoscope of color. I couldn’t move, so mesmerized was I by stripes and dots and shades of the rainbow.
The Salt Pier is an operational salt production pier where ships are loaded with sea salt that is produced on Bonaire in evaporation ponds. When workers are not present, divers are allowed to visit and enjoy the amazing sea life that claims the pilings as home. It was here–amid hundreds of French grunts, a yellow-striped fish–where I experienced weightlessness as geometries and wild colors danced within inches of my mask.
If divers are still and don’t flail through the water, fish can be surprisingly accepting of our presence. I know of nothing else in this world I’d rather be doing than floating relaxed and at ease with a large school of fish. Today they moved as one so once I settled in, I became part of their school and we swayed in the gentle surge together. Around we went, slowly…ever-so-slowly…winding our way through massive pilings filled with sponges, soft and hard corals and colors as brilliant as the fish. Christmas tree worms decorated sponges in brilliant colors. Blennys less than half the size of my little finger popped in and out of their tiny holes in the coral and sponges, their eyes smaller than a pin head. The variety of life expressed in the Ocean, in one small area, is simply mind-blowing to me.
Slow and steady breathing through my regulator, motionless except for small pushes the Ocean gave me and my fish friends, I was truly at home. At peace. At home within myself.
A turquoise, pink and yellow rainbow parrotfish would occasionally dash through our school creating a cooperative parting of the mass. A jack would dart in and out and we simply moved out of the way, creating space…floating…existing in harmony.
Right now green parrots are screeching outside the screen porch as I sit and reflect on the day. Palm fronds sway and rustle in the wind. The Ocean is 50 yards from me and one would never guess the amazing life that lives just below the surface. Such beauty, amazingly, profoundly present just 30 feet under the surface. It makes me wonder what beauty lies just beneath the surface of each of us. If we only realized this….