Скачать или смотреть Reefs of Change… some mid-dive thoughts from the mind of a nature lover in Raja Ampat

"Remember this"...I tell myself..."Remember this endless flow of fish"... "carve the coral, the fish, the sharks and giant rays into your minds eye, and never, EVER forget"... "Hold these memories close for when you are an old woman and the ocean is no longer the same"..."Share your memories with anyone who will listen and believe you…because one day, this reef may be nothing more than than a memory, a dusty sepia photo... a faded echo reminiscent of another time".

These are the kinds of thoughts and feelings that overwhelm me when I dive on reefs that are unmarked on the tourist maps, out of reach for the masses and beyond the edges of where 'where you normally go'. The reefs we've scoured the maps for... zooming in and out and wondering what's there, daydreamed about, pieced together against depth charts, local knowledge and overlayed academic knowledge. The reefs that take you back to another time... to a time before it all began to change, to a time that may never be ever again.

I know I am privileged with the diving I’ve been able to do.. I acknowledge I am spoilt. Yet after the thousands dives I've done in Raja Ampat over almost 10yrs; there's only ever been THREE that have moved me like this. And each time my heart burst, broke, overflowed and shattered with a bittersweet and overwhelming combination of joy and despair. This video cannot capture it.. a man-made mechanical device cannot possibly replicate what nature does when left alone to be at its most spectacular.

Dives like this make me wonder, when I'm an old lady... what will I be able to tell the children of the future? Will I tell them about 'the time before' and do the very best I can to describe in intricate detail the colour, the movement, the LIFE that exploded from every inch of these coral reefs? Will they look at me confused as their imaginations try to grasp what it is the old lady in front of them is describing whilst looking over skeletal remains of the reef that was... will they look sideways at each other or roll their eyes as they write me off as a crazy elder telling exaggerated stories from her younger days, about as believable as walking with dinosaurs?

Or…will they say… "yes we understand. YES!! It is STILL exactly as you describe... and we love it now as much as you did then".

I hope, I pray, I beg for the second scenario, because the first is too much for me to bear.

That is why I do what I do. It is we do what we do.

We are The SEA People.
We are Orang Laut.

www.theseapeople.org
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Music: 'Beautiful Nature' by LesFM

• Beautiful Nature