Home » Home & Style » Conservation » Dreaming of Blue Water

Dreaming of Blue Water

© Erica Myers-Russo

I dreamed last night that I was swimming in blue water. Not just any blue water, but the diver's blue water - the ocean just beyond the coastline where you are suspended in an alternate reality. I dreamed in such detail that I woke grudgingly, unable to convince myself that I was not in that watery world. Such a dream was possible - or perhaps inescapable - since I had just finished Carlos Eyles book The Last of the Blue Water Hunters. In it, Eyles describes the incredible and unknown world inhabited by the blue water hunter - a special breed of free divers who stalk giant pelagic fish armed only with a breath and a speargun.

In my limited SCUBA experience, I have made only a couple of blue water descents. They were brief but unnerving descents on deep dives, outside the familiar kelp forests I had come to rely on for vertical orientation. I was always relieved to see the bottom come into view. In blue water, there are no visual indicators, only the water, the fish, and weightless you. In this gravity-free environment, it is possible to lose your orientation, unable to tell up from down. Bubbles rise. You exhale, and know which direction will take you to the surface.

There are those who overcome the human fear of the deep, and I once had the privilege of accompanying some. Both men had been diving for 15 years, starting in their early teens. I marveled at their prowess. Hyperventilating briefly on the surface, they took a final breath before pivoting at the hips and making an effortless vertical descent. Upon reaching their depth (which free divers always display an uncanny knack for judging) they leveled off and swam along for a minute or more before lifting their heads and rising. Their movements were fluid beyond description, and borne of a fearlessness that I envied wholeheartedly.

It is a similar skill that enabled Eyles to live for a awhile by his spear alone. Reading his account of that time in The Last of the Blue Water Hunters is bittersweet. His exploits thrill vicariously, from coming face-to-face with a shark to being bowled over by a whale and her calf. Simultaneously, however, the book depresses because the ocean that Eyles experienced - just decades ago - no longer exists. He describes, for instance, abalone so thick that a diver once took his limit of five on a single dive. Or lobsters covering the sea floor like a living carpet. Or white sea bass moving in schools like rivers through the water.

The copyright of the article Dreaming of Blue Water in Conservation is owned by . Permission to republish Dreaming of Blue Water in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.