Who has never dreamed of being a fish, evolving underwater in complete tranquility, encountering whales or even playing with dolphins? It’s often a childhood dream… But it can become a reality.
The first apprehensions
For that, it’s quite simple: you have to gather your courage and put your head underwater. Yes, taking the leap and doing an introduction dive isn’t as intuitive as it seems. One may have apprehensions. Personally, I had many during my first time in the water, or rather my first time underwater. But what a discovery! I was a fish! Certainly, a clumsy fish flailing and zigzagging everywhere, but a fish nonetheless. I was finally swimming with them! I saw what the world of silence that Commander Cousteau described looked like. I discovered the world of Big Blue. This experience only lasted a few moments, a few minutes of a summer afternoon, but in reality, I signed up for a lifetime!
Constraints quickly forgotten
So yes, to dive, you have to train, equip yourself with a tank that’s often too heavy, sometimes immerse yourself in cold water, in the midst of swells that make you think « what am I doing here?« . You have to know Bolt’s law, maritime knots, how a regulator works, safety and first aid gestures. You need to rinse your equipment, store it, and sometimes spend hours filling the tanks. You need to learn to look underwater, to approach marine life without disturbing it. You need to accept that sometimes, apart from us, there was no one else underwater: the fish were not at the meeting point. And there are also all the friends and even strangers with whom you share just one dive, but you look out for each other to ensure everything goes well. And of course, there’s always the after-dive drink, like the third half in rugby, but without sore ribs and a black eye.
The well-being of immersion
Doctors talk about the power of water, the well-being it brings us while in it. For some, it is the buried memory of the beginnings of our life, when we were floating in the amniotic fluid of our mother’s womb. Divers have left their mother for the sea. Ultimately, it is somewhat in the order of things to seek a place where we feel good.
If your childhood dream is to swim with the fish. Go for it! Live it! Get yourself a pair of fins, a mask, and a snorkel, or walk through the door of a diving club and discover the underwater world!
Pierre Boissery