Me, in Cozumel, Mexico.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and let myself tip backward. The weight of the air tank on my back yanks me towards the dark blue water, fast. With a whoosh, I lurch into the sea. Floating on the surface, I let the air out of my buoyancy vest and I sink slowly, inching closer and closer to the sandy seabed below me. I spin around to find my dive buddy. “OK?” he signals to me. “OK,” I signal back. We nod at each other and descend more quickly now.
This is a shallow dive, only about forty feet below the ocean surface, and my second dive of the day. There is little current and the visibility is clear, and all is calm – until I feel the sharp edge of a fin dig into my arm. What the hell? But then I realize that it’s only James*, the oldest diver I’ve ever met. And the clumsiest. Completely unaware of where his body, fins, tank, and camera end up, James is one of the reef’s main hazards.
Knocking into coral and kicking up sand, as well as disturbing turtles and fish as they go about their business, James’ messy diving poses a risk to the ecosystem and sea life habitats. Having completed my Underwater Naturalist dive certification while in Cozumel, Mexico, I’m now achingly aware of each and every bump and scrape that the reef endures from careless divers. While completing the course, I learned about the effects divers can have on underwater ecosystems, and how to be more aware not only of myself but of others too in our surroundings. I believe that James should have taken this course with me. Every time he hit the reef with his tank and fins, I felt the thud of the blow reverberate through my whole body and it hurt to see bits of coral break away from the rest of the reef, especially when underwater ecosystems around the world are being destroyed so quickly by the building of new docks and cruise ship ports, the growth of the oil industry, the effects of climate change on the coral and landscape, and the effects of shark finning and dangerous fishing practices on the sea life population. I want to protect it all. I want to be able to have as much of a reach and impact as Rob Stewart, underwater environmentalist and filmmaker from Toronto, Ontario.
On January 31st, 2017, Rob Stewart, conservationist and filmmaker, had only just surfaced from his third dive of the day in the Florida Keys when he went back under the waves. He had just come up from a 70-metre dive (approximately 230 feet) – very deep by the average diver’s standards – and had been using rebreather equipment, which recycles a diver’s air while re-supplementing the depleted oxygen. While working on a sequel to his 2006 documentary Sharkwater, Stewart passed out on the surface while waiting for his crew to pick him out of the water. His dive buddy had passed out after being pulled onboard as a result of hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, due to miscalculations in the oxygen levels needed for the third dive. As the crew was circling back to where they'd last seen him, they realized he was gone – he’d completely vanished beneath the waves. He was found three days later, 91 metres from where he went missing.
As everyone within the diving community knows, deep dives have the potential to be extremely dangerous, especially when proper risk assessment and preparations have not been made. Many divers do not exceed more than two dives a day because of the physical intensity of diving. It’s hard on your body. The nitrogen that leaks into your body, mixed with the physical labour of swimming against the currents, and the pressure of the water below the surface, is enough to tire anyone out.
Rob Stewart was an ambassador of the oceans and their greatest and oldest predators – sharks. He stood up for them, he gave them a voice when so many were trying to silence them. He believed that to lose the sharks would disrupt the oceanic ecosystem beyond repair. To lose them would be to lose ourselves; our ecosystem cannot exist without theirs. He understood, he listened, and then he fought for the protection of the ocean. He worked with sharks and he studied the impact that the shark fin and the fishing industries had on that sacred place. At the end of Stewart’s 2018 documentary, Sharkwater Extinction, it was revealed that over 15, 000 sharks are killed every hour and half. This was a terrifying and grim realization to come to at the end of the film, but it reinforced what Rob’s been telling us for years: we can’t stop fighting for our oceans.
He knew how to take care of the ocean. He knew how to treat it with respect. He knew what would happen if he didn’t. If we all don’t. He worked to get this lesson to all of us, through his films, through talks and public speaking, and by reaching out to his followers through social media. Rob warned us of the destruction of reefs and natural habitats. He made people more aware of their impact on the earth. He made me more aware of my impact.
Not everyone takes the extreme caution and care that Rob took on his dives. Every year I get the honour of spending two weeks doing nothing but diving in Cozumel. I try to be like him, observing the reef without interfering with its natural growth, watching and learning. In my time away from the ocean, it’s all I think about. I’ve been hooked since my very first dive – I've now logged over 140. The ocean calls me back, and I am obliged to answer that call. Even divers like James, who kick up sand and disturb the fish, who break coral and scare the turtles by getting too close, can’t stay away from the reefs. We love it too much.
Trying to act casual as I meet Rob Stewart (2014).
During my dives, I think a lot about Rob Stewart, the oceanographers who came before him, and the other divers I’ve encountered. I met a man who dove with Jacques Cousteau in Cozumel before Cousteau put my tiny island on the map for divers. Once, on a dive boat, I met one of the original creators of GPS. I’ve met dive shop owners and divemasters, surgeons, teachers, and artists, and each of them is drawn back to the dive boats by their passion for diving and love of the ocean.
The media portrays diving as a glamorous way to get up close and personal with the creatures of the sea. Netflix documentaries and shows like Oceans, The Blue Planet, and Ocean Wonders all depict diving as a hands-on experience in the underwater world, interacting with sea creatures and swimming through underwater playgrounds made of coral thousands of years old. Thanks to the popularity of documentaries like these, scuba diving is increasing in popularity at a rapid pace. It’s now so easy for people to dive in exotic locations. Diving is a therapeutic and humbling activity, meant to bring humans closer to their underwater companions. The beauty drives the passion and admiration in divers. It’s what keeps them coming back.
On that same dive trip with James, I had a truly wild and inspiring experience. Twenty minutes before the end of the dive, I had begun to drift towards the back of the dive group. Soon enough, I was at the very back. There was little current; it would take only three or four lazy kicks to catch up with the rest of the divers. I looked up, watching the way the waves scattered sunlight on the surface like a stained glass window. But all too soon, my tranquility was interrupted when I felt a bump against my air tank. I can’t believe James knocked into me again, I thought, spinning around to silently confront him with angry hand signals. As I tried to figure out how to sign Hey man, back off! a light gray shape took form just below my left hand. That’s not James, that’s a shark. THAT’S A SHARK! Instinctively, I curled up into a ball and tried to call out to show the other divers the SHARK THAT FOUND ME. But as luck would have it, no one heard my muffled shouts from behind the breathing regulator clenched in my jaw.
As the shark crept closer and closer to my group, I followed behind, my heart still racing. Time passed infuriatingly slowly until one of the divers in my group turned around and noticed my shark. She shook her noisemaker and within seconds, the entire group was completely infatuated. It circled around us and made a beeline straight back to me. I’m just like Rob Stewart, I thought.
Breathing fast and bubbles shooting rapid-fire out of my regulator, excitement was literally bubbling out of me. The shark circled back around, skimming my thighs, before it caught a whiff of a lionfish the divemaster had speared earlier during the dive. The divemaster shook the lionfish on the end of his spear, and the shark darted forward and snapped at it. The lionfish was gone in seconds. Seemingly satisfied, the shark swam off into the dizzying blue distance. I willed it to come back, but it didn’t listen. The shark was not mine, and it did not belong to me. It had only come by in the hopes of snagging an easy snack.
It is this passion and excitement that drove Rob Stewart to the ocean – the love of diving, the love of the water, the love of the creatures within it. It's what pulls me back to the sea, like a siren’s song, urging me to come back. But instead of pulling me under, I choose to dip my head back beneath the foamy waves. It is the excitement and childlike wonder of exploring the blue-tinted world that brings back the divemasters, the surgeons, the teachers, and the artists. The love of a world so different from our own. Nothing in the ocean is ever the same, twice. No two dives are alike. The possibility of seeing a rare batfish, or maybe a dolphin or two, or a shark on the hunt, fuels the urge to jump back in as soon as I climb up out of the sea.
The ocean isn’t ours to claim. It doesn’t follow human law; it cares only for being and growing and living. Those who are privileged enough to explore its depths have the opportunity to witness this first-hand. This passion that brings all of us back to the sea should drive us to take care of it – to leave it as untouched and undamaged as possible. Rob Stewart’s passion alone is not enough to protect the ocean and its inhabitants. We need more people to use their love of diving to motivate them to protect it so their children, and their children’s children, will be able to experience the same joy and admiration and wonder that we all had on our first dives. But his message is one that has the ability to inspire us to work together, all over the world. As long as the ocean is treated with respect and care, it will continue to keep calling us back.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of individuals.
