A while ago, I saw an xkcd comic about being stranded on a desert island - looking out at the vast, perfectly flat blue infinity, struck by the lack of anything worthwhile.
Had I been stranded on a deserted island six months ago, this would have absolutely been me. Well, and without goggles, it would still be me, but that’s neither here nor there.
As I live in Saudi Arabia, activities can be… sparse. There’s cycling and sports, but for the most part it’s too hot to do anything until the evening. In January I first joined some of my friends on a dive trip of theirs - I was only snorkeling, but they assured me there would be plenty to see. Growing up a good 1500km from a large saline body of water, my experience had been rather limited. When I finally got ready, and put my head under water, my head popped back up about half a second later, shouting to my friends, “Holy crap! There’s fish everywhere!”
My friends just sort of looked back at me as if to say, “yeah… about that - that’s why we come.”
From that point on, I’ve been hooked. I have since gotten dive-certified, and gone a few trips. Few things are better than getting to explore a world unseen by most people, sometimes seeing reefs so random and remote that it’s unlikely that people have even been there at all. On every boat trip, we pass uncountably many shallow reef patches, that extend for kilometers - they really are sprawling, massive underwater cities.
A few weeks ago, I got to go on a truly fantastic trip. The Marine Science department at KAUST tags and studies whale sharks, and every so often they take along “tourists.” We saw between 5 and 7 unique sharks, the longest of which was about 6.5m (20 feet), though apparently they can grow to be over 12m (40 feet). Roll clip:
How this worked is we had two boats (one filled with researchers and one filled with us tourists), and if either boat spotted something, they’d sound the horn, and everyone jumped in. As such, we would all sit on the edge of the boat, fins on, masks ready - just in and out of the water all day. Once in, the sharks tended to swim pretty fast - they seem to be barely exerting themselves and we’re swimming as fast as we can. And, if they don’t care to outrun us and want to get away, they dive beyond our reaches.
On this same trip we saw a lonely sea turtle, about the size of a dinner plate. We all hopped in the water and had turns getting our pictures taken with him. Honestly, I felt a little weird about picking him up, but he really did not seem to mind it. It does violate a widely-followed rule among responsible divers - touch nothing (unless you really know what it is and that it’s not going to damage you or it).
We also saw a “pod” of three dolphins; they often appear briefly on these boat trips, but usually scurry off pretty quickly in our experience. On this occasion, though, as we were already set up to be hopping in and out of the water at a moment’s notice, we did try to swim with them. They mostly stayed about 6m below us, and were much more difficult to keep up with than the whale sharks. That said, fortune favored the persistent, and after about 15 minutes of some of my hardest swimming, I managed to spot them and get within about 2m (6 feet) of them as they surfaced. One was badly scarred across his back, but the other two were untouched. They came up for a quick drink of air, descended a few meters, did a somersault underwater and then looked at me as if to say, “Oh, you can’t do that, can you?”
It’s hard to take in the incredible gravity and beauty of the sights, let alone when swimming as fast as you can and perpetually out of breath. I’m glad I got the chance, and I hope to see more aquatic life, but there is definitely a reason it’s remote. Consider this: in hiking, the highest I’ve been is just over 14,000 feet, but the limits of recreational diving is a mere 40m (130 feet) and that requires even more specialized training. Consider, too, the Mariana Trench - which is less accessible: the deep sea or space?
Since the opening of the KAUST beach, we’ve explored much of the reef, sometimes to the dismay of the coast guard. We take precautions - never going alone, bringing a dive flag, and knowing our limits. Floating along in the warm water, seeing thousands of fishes, swimming around is enough to make anyone want to play Jacques Cousteau.