Diving 101

Coral reefs are among the most bio-diverse ecosystems

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I never thought I would learn to scuba dive.

Maybe it's because I'd read all those "Shark Attack" stories in Reader's Digest when I was a kid.

Or maybe it was because I had heard about the "bends," that mysterious illness that can strike divers who rise from the deep too quickly.

Or maybe it was all that scary-looking gear: expensive, high-tech life-support equipment. Life support: That means you needed it to survive in a place where humans didn't belong.

I mean, this is the age of virtual reality: You don't have to actually DO something, right? You can watch it on TV. Do it "virtually" on the Internet. Fact was, I was afraid of diving.

But then I took a ride on a glass bottom boat on a tropical reef.

Here is what I saw:

Colors: Bright splashes of red and yellow and green and purple shimmering across a turquoise canvas.

Corals: Breathing, pulsing, swaying in the currents.

Fishes: A hundred kinds or more: Bright as a shout, subtle as a shadow, swarming in schools or swaying with the surge.

There was a whole world down there, a world of color and light and life.

I was instantly hooked.

I wanted to see more, and not in a glass bottom boat. I wanted to go beneath the sea. And to do that, I needed to learn to dive.

If you're like most people, you might have the tiniest bit of fear thinking about putting on life-support equipment and going underwater, where humans clearly don't belong. But the truth is that learning to dive is easy, safe, and a lot of fun.