Learning how to dive turned out to be more than a lesson in diving. It taught me how to embrace fear, gave me a new perspective on life and built my confidence to come face-to-face with a shark!
I’ve always dreamt of being able to breathe underwater and experience the sensation of gliding without gravity.
I’d snorkelled in many beautiful places across SE Asia and something was calling me to go deeper.
But I was terrified.
Having worked as a TV news journalist in Western Australia’s South West, I’d reported on my fair share of shark attacks, some of them tragically fatal.
So the predators of the ocean were at the forefront of my mind.
And ever since watching the brilliant Steven Spielberg classic ‘Jaws’ as a teenager, I’d been too scared to swim past head height when we went to the beach.
This was a super annoying fear to have growing up on the coast spending most summer weekends at the beach.
But for some reason I liked the idea of diving. I think being able to see the world from a new perspective excited me, just like travelling to a new place, it was essentially sightseeing underwater.
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In April 2017, I was at Gili Air, a small island off Lombok, Indonesia, which is world famous for its diving and got chatting to a local dive instructor over a few days.
He convinced me to do a Discover Scuba Dive, which is a PADI certified introduction to diving.
I felt that by doing my first dive with someone I’d built a rapport with would be the best, if not the only, way I could do it.
I learnt the theory work first and then we jumped into the swimming pool at the dive school, Oceans 5.
I remember sitting on the shallow pool floor and hesitantly breathing in underwater the first time. I didn’t choke and die – success!
My instructor, Irwan, started using hand gestures to communicate with me underwater, explaining what I needed to practice.
I had a flash of anxiety because I wanted to clarify what he was saying and considered standing up to ask a question.
But I realised I needed to give in, and just go with it. I sure as hell couldn’t stand up and ask a question in the ocean, so why would I do it now?
I made it through that first uneasy moment, submitting to the new way of communicating and concentrating really hard to make sure I was doing the right thing.
Next was the big one: diving in the deep, dark ocean. Okay, it was just to 12 metres and it was picture-perfect turquoise, but it still felt daunting AF!
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We got out to the dive spot, kitted up in our gear and did our checks. Irwan explained how to enter the water by falling backwards from the boat, just like he’d showed me in the diagram back at the school.
Irwan led the way, leaning back and falling from the boat and into the sea. I was left sitting up on the side of the boat by myself. A flash of fear suddenly gripped me.
How could I fall backwards? I didn’t know what was underneath. What if I hit my head on the boat? What if my gear slipped off? Would they judge me if I just stayed on the boat with the skipper?
I had to use all my willpower in those seconds to hype myself up in my mind to just let go of the fear and the sense of control.
In a moment of clarity, I realised I needed to actually embrace that fear as an opportunity to grow as a person. I had to do it.
Okay. Breathe.
3,2,1, GO.
Silence…
WHOOSH!
The swirl of white wash around my head as I tumbled in to the ocean was like the chaos of my mind getting flushed out, pulverised in a blender and swept away as fish food.
It was the most liberating feeling I had ever experienced to that moment.
I found diving to be therapeutic for anxiety because you’re forced to be present, and are so literally immersed in the immediate environment, taking in the awe of your surroundings.
There is no opportunity to worry about all the things on your to-do list or contemplate if you are making good life choices.
It’s just you, the people around you in that moment, the ocean creatures and epic scenery.
I was still nervous, and luckily my instructor didn’t mind me being a stage-five clinger underwater, reaching out for his hand a few times to ease my fear.
But I gained the ability to relinquish control and to have trust. Trust in my instructor, trust in my equipment, trust in the ocean, trust in myself, and trust that everything would be okay.
It ended up being more than a lesson in diving. I learnt that when you realise you can’t control everything and you place your trust into the universe, you are instantly free.
Who ever thought diving could get so deep – pardon the pun.
The more dives I did, the more comfortable I became and I decided I wanted to swim with a shark to get rid of that lingering thought.
During a recent dive in Byron Bay, off the east coast of Australia, the shark encounter happened!
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I was swimming behind the divemaster when she gestured the shark fin hand signal while pointing at me.
I turned around to see a shark, around 1.5 metres long, swimming straight towards me.
It felt like slow motion, with the shark immediately slowing its charge.
We locked eyes. The shark was so close to my face I could’ve touched it, but it had a quick look at me then swam off.
I turned back around to see the rest of the group staring with wide, stunned eyes.
I smiled knowing I’d just confronted a fear head-on and vanquished it.
Seeing the underwater environment so many metres below sea level has opened my eyes to a whole new realm of sightseeing which has given travel a new meaning for me.
It was a no-brainer for me to continue my diving and become qualified as an Open Water Diver and then an Advanced Open Water Diver, which I did in Borneo, Malaysia on my next travels.
More on diving in Borneo and the island of Mabul in my next post.
