The Deep

It’s strange, from all those days spent sliding across the ocean’s smooth surface, I’ve never glimpsed the life that unfolds in the void below. In truth I’ve never mustered the courage, and I can credit it to a childhood misfortune, fishing with my father in the north of Scotland and the miraculous resurrection of a seemingly dead trout right next to my foot. Since that day, fish have always had an unsettling presence and I’ve avoided their world whenever possible; I’m easy to spot in the surf, I’m the one with his legs curled awkwardly underneath him who splashes feverishly at the slightest sign of an approaching shoal.

So today feels unnatural at best. The boat is a rib with a metal rail running down the centre onto which we all cling to save being bounced into the frigid waters of the Atlantic as we head out of Hout Bay en route for Duiker Island. If you’ve not heard of Duiker Island you may have heard of Dungeons, where mere mortals ride mountains on rhino chasers as the winter swells come charging out of the deep roaring forties and jack on the shallow reef, home to an enormous colony of seals. Today I am not a surfer, today I am a freediver, and I will be diving in the waters off Duiker island, in a thick wetsuit with a weight belt. Up till this moment, I’ve not even snorkeled.

I am here because of a friend. Hanli is a freediver. She holds records in South Africa. But she is more than just that, she is an adventurer, a free spirit, strong willed but kind hearted and of an infectious enthusiasm for the ocean that keeps her. Hanli also makes good tea, this is important, she has shelves devoted to its various blends and infusions and it was over several cups that she persuaded me that it was time to conquer my fear and discover something new.  He who wakes breathless and sweat sodden after nightmares of swirling baitfish balls. This was her idea, but who was I to say no? The tea was good, and it sounded like an adventure. Something new, something different.

So we meet in the harbour at 10am. Hanli with her bespoke carbon fibre fins, and me, in dilapidated surfing suit and an ad-hoc selection of boots and gloves to protect against the colder waters of the Atlantic.

It’s a bumpy fifteen-minute trip out through the kelp until we arrive at the boiling waters just off Duiker. When dungeons is breaking, this is the graveyard Inside, where fallen surfers and battered jet-skis wash ashore, but today there’s only a whisper of swell on the reef at the back, and the seals are out in force, playing in the waves. Hanli hands me a mask and we fall over the side, into the blue.

Previous excursions under the surface have always remained satisfyingly blurred in the absence of a mask, with the finer details of ocean life rendered blurry and indecipherable, and therefore non-existent to my mind. However through the mask the deep becomes visible for the first time and I make out purple anemones through the flotsam of the disturbed kelp beds. The water flushes cold around my suit as I struggle to bring my breathing under control and relax. Peering beneath the surface, this ocean environment I know and love so well seems strangely foreign. Beside me I feel a reassuring grip as Hanli takes my hand, her hand signal indicates five long breaths, then we’ll be going under. I close my eyes and try to focus as I fill my lungs to what feels like their very limit, and then we dive.

With the assistance of the weight belts we slide through the thick kelp canopy that sits just below the surface and brush aside the vast swathes of deep green to revel a forest of thick stems climbing up from the bottom, swaying eerily on the tide in deathly silence. I feel pressure and equalise for the first time, and with the release comes a wave of sound. I hear the reef crackling below and soon the beat of passing seals. From land they seem so cumbersome, but below they are bright and playful, cart wheeling around us with small echoes of delight, animated and brimming with personality.

I feel the burn in my lungs for the first time, but she leads me on and to the bottom where we sit and watch as light falls in silent shafts from the silhouettes above. The burn grows deeper, I have to leave. I rise slowly, exhaling a stream of bubbles in the silent blue-grey. I break the surface and breath deeply. Overhead the sentinel looms large and I am intently aware of the sound of gulls and crashing surf. The ocean’s surface gleams in the daylight, impenetrable, a marble lid on the world I just left below. To my left I hear the groans of a large male seal as he shuffles awkwardly to mark his territory. I feel a smile on my lips, I want to go back, and I compose myself and prepare to go back under.

I’ve found a new passion. Not merely freediving but the deep. It’s been so close for so long but has always seemed a distant, unreachable and, in many ways, an impersonal space. Like many things that I deemed out of my reach, rendered untouchable by an irrational fear, I experienced it through other mediums; books, television, movies, but it was never a place I thought I’d experience so closely and it was so alien to me that I could never fully understand and appreciate its intricacies and fragility in full. For each brief descent, for each brief glimpse of life below the water, I became increasingly overwhelmed by the volume, complexity, beauty and sheer personality of the world under the surface. I saw it; I understood it and I appreciated it. These days, that’s an important realisation.