Trifter

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

I take a deep breath then……Splash!! I have jumped into the warm water of the summertime Red Sea. In the first few moments before I take the leap of faith, I recall all of the boring and exhausting training to become a scuba diver. Should I have trained to become a scuba diver? Maybe the rewards of being able to dive anywhere are worth the difficult training. I remember having to recite Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus so many times that I got a headache. I remember the long hours of training how to save myself from explosion of the lung and how to treat somebody who has nitrogen narcosis. In those few milliseconds, I feel the euphoria of diving off a boat into the depths of the Sea and the joy of not training anymore. I am so used to the murky pits of an unnamed lake in Southern Florida which I had to practice in. Right when my head breaches the welcoming water, I see an explosion of color and my mouth falls open, which then drops the regulator out of my mouth and then makes me rush back up to the surface to put it back. I could never have imagined seeing all of the beautiful corals and fish that I have intruded upon and when I dive back in the water, I take snapshots of all of the red and green trigger fish, the moray eels, and the green sea turtle. As I swim with my father, I see the shipwreck of the SS Aida, a ship sunk in WWII. The fish seem to not notice me and I try to get closer to a school of barracuda to take a few pictures with them. The salty taste and the beams of light piercing thought the water from the sun make this place seem like another world.

As I swim around the red coral, I see a manta ray glide overhead. A white tip reef shark cruises ten meters below me. This truly is a diverse place. When I read my air gauge, it shows only about five minutes of air left. I wish I could stay here forever, in this palace of the fish. When I start to emerge from the depths and return to the boat, I take a last look at this paradise. When I   boarded the boat, I talk with my dad about how I think my months of training to become a diver paid off. I think that scuba diving is a very fund hobby and that the Red sea is the best place to dive in the whole world. It is pretty ironic that the most depressing form of training can enable one to dive through the crystal clear depths of the Red Sea.