Under the sea

The screensaver of my notebook is an underwater world replete with the diverse denizens of the deep. Every day, I am in direct contact with these creatures, and the blue waters that seem to spillover my computer screen are providing me some sort of comfort, especially now that the temperature â€â€Â day or night â€â€Â is boiling.

It has been so hot the past few weeks that I am beginning to suspect that the earth has not only one but two or three suns. It is when I feel that the earth is scorched that I always consider taking refuge under the sea.

Ever since I first broke through the glassy water of Palawan more than five years ago and experienced what lies below it, my life has never been the same. Diving has brought me to the realm all too different from what I experience on the surface. In just a span of one minute, as any diver will tell you, you can see a myriad of species than in one hour in the most virgin wilderness above water. Each dive is different but each has a common denominator â€â€Â it is a communion with nature. The peace that permeates the sea is perhaps the same serenity that was present when the world was created. The underwater world is so serene that the only sound that you will hear is the beating of your heart and the reassuring hiss as you breathe through your mouth via a regulator.

I must confess, however, that I am not a certified diver. I am what you call a spoiled diver because always, always, when I check out open waters, I am in the company of dive masters and instructors who check on me. (Oh, you just don’t know how it feels to be pampered under the sea!) These are my diving friends who always tell me â€â€Â pardon my seeming immodesty â€â€Â that I am "a natural diver" and they will certify me if only I can stay in this or that dive resort for a number of days. But as always, I do not have the liberty and luxury of time, or have I just accustomed myself to being served and serviced every time I dive? Probably one day, I will say goodbye to my being a dive brat as I get my PADI certification. (As I write this, my friend Yvette Lee, the Philippines’ only underwater photojournalist â€â€Â her photographs and articles about her dives around the world have seen print in local and international magazines â€â€Â calls to say that she will chain me up with iron balls just so I will be certified before the summer ends.) Meanwhile, as this piece is dedicated to those who have not yet experienced how it feels to be in open waters, let a novice like me tell you how exciting and thrilling the experience can be.

For the uninitiated, it feels awkward and strange the first time â€â€Â the wet suit, the mask, the fins, the weight belt and yes, that air tank on your back. (Many call it oxygen tank when in fact what it really contains is compressed air.) But as you slip below the surface after that first back roll, everything takes a new form, a new dimension, a new world, a new life. The curtain of fish that seems to lift the minute you move in the waters is magical. The sight of prehistoric-looking green sea turtles that swim past you â€â€Â unmindful of your existence â€â€Â is humbling. Finding Nemo and his family of clown fish amidst sea anemones is a fun game under the sea. And if the garden of corals that comes in all shapes, sizes and colors is not enough to excite you, wait until "darkness" fills your particular space that moment in time. Then look up â€â€Â giant manta rays are above you. After they swim past above you, the veil of darkness is lifted and the corals shine their brightest again. You feel exhilarated at the experience and the blue-lipped giant kabibes (tridacnas) seem to rejoice with you.

A word of caution though, you may not experience what I described above all at the same time. Those instances were the summation of the many intro dives I did in Palawan, Anilao in Batangas, Cebu and Palau. In the future, I want to be able to meet the creatures of the crevices in Tubbataha (Yvette promised to bring me there if she gets me certified soon), Malapascua, Sipadan Island in Malaysia, Similan Islands in Thailand, the Maldives and Galapagos. I also want to be able to dive in the Red Sea in Egypt. I am still thinking whether or not I am ready to meet up with a Great White Shark in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. That’s negotiable.

Well, I once swam with five-meter black-tipped sharks in Palau â€â€Â three sharks to my right and four to my left â€â€Â and those predators seemed friendly in their habitat at the famous Blue Corner where a diver is assured 99.9 percent to see sharks. Those sharks won’t attack unless provoked. I wanted to follow those bottom-dwellers but my buddy cautioned me: we were already more than 70 feet under the sea. And I am a novice diver, remember?

In Palawan, a little further off the shores of Club Noah Isabelle, my dive instructor made me experience to be in the habitat of Napoleon wrasses locally known as mameng. (Please tell the person sitting next to you to stop eating mameng for that species is endangered already.) I tell you, one Napoleon wrasse as big as a Volkswagen went up to me. I thought I would end up in its mouth when it yawned in front of me.

In Cebu City â€â€Â where one in every three persons you meet is a diver â€â€Â while on a recent vacation at the Hilton, the hotel’s marketing and communications manager Miok Loyola asked me if I dive. When I said yes (of course with a disclaimer that I was a diving brat), we found ourselves at Scuba World, the dive shop in the Queen City of the South. Soon Miok, her colleague Hargie Quiliope and I were frolicking with the creatures of the deep at Talima Point. We were already more than 20 feet deep (and must have been in the waters for about 18 minutes) when I felt constricting chest pains. I panicked but I could still see the fish staring at me. My buddy and dive master Kakoi Agusto helped me get back to the boat where, upon embarking, I let go of a loud and deep burp. I forgot, I just ate a hefty lunch, which, according to Michi Miura, a Japanese dive instructor at Scuba World who was with us, is a no-no when diving.

But that near-death experience did not stop me from dreaming to dive again and be with the fish, sharks, manta rays, sea snakes, turtles once more. In life, I surmise, there is that one particular experience that teaches you a lesson. But it does not teach you to stop from experiencing it again.

Diving is a love affair of sorts because you don’t dive without a buddy. Together, you protect each other, care for and check on each other and discover more things in familiar or unfamiliar waters. More importantly, diving is a love affair between you and the creatures that you see when you dive. You marvel at the denizens of the deep and you see how majestic the natural world can be. And you wonder how many of us, the stewards of the earth, can be very disregarding of nature.

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com.

Have a blessed Sunday!)