Sixty Feet Under

from being submerged nearly sixty feet under water in Roatan, Honduras.
The day was grim; grey, rainy, windy, cold. The rain propelled by wind felt
like bullets tearing through my body. I boarded the boat, and the captain
started the engine. The boat, a mere dingy with an engine, oriented itself
with its nose pointing to an impenetrable curtain of rain. The rain pulled the
clouds down like paint running on an unfinished portrait. We accelerated out
into the midst of the storm. The shuck, shuck, shuck, of the boat slicing
through the waves became a steady shhhhhh. Eventually, the boat slowed to
a stop where it was tied to an empty milk jug of a buoy. We geared up, masks
on, bdcs or buoyancy control devices inflated, fins on, regulators in. I sat on
the edge of the boat, my back to the rapidly approaching clouds, and looked
towards the shore. The houses constructed from left over pallets and tin
sheeting visible littered the shoreline. I fell back.

The grey of the sky turned white as the bubbles veiled my vision. I
swam through the choppy waves and began the slow descent to sixty feet.
As I looked from the bottom, massive pillars of coral thrust through the off-
white sand like the fingers of God himself. I began the planned drift, kicking
off and surrendering myself to the current. I was free, helplessly carried by
the currents through coral canyons rising fifteen feet above me. The walls, a
mere five or six feet apart, seemed to reach towards me. The lavender fans
stretching a foot in diameter billowed gently in the current like the branches
of a tree in a slight gust of wind. I worked my way through these canyons,
each unveiling a new creature. In one, a deep green moray eel hid itself,
twisting its serpentine body through cracks and holes in the coral. In another,
a school of fluorescent blue fish, hundreds if not thousands of these inch
sized fish darted away as I approached them.

Finally, we drifted out to the reef wall. The drop-off. The sudden jump
from sixty feet deep to over three hundred. Looking between my fins, the
darkness created by depth seemed to reach up towards me, pulling me
down, deeper and deeper into the heart of the sea. I was away from the wall,
surrendered to the currents when two dark shadows crept into my range of
view. They approached quickly, gliding through the water like a bird glides
through the sky. As they advanced towards me, I recognized the sheer size of
these graceful creatures. They were eight feet from tip to tip and were
followed by a fourteen to sixteen foot tail equipped with a spine six inches
long. As they drew near, I could see the definitive white dots covering its
dark body in a seemingly hap hazardous way, yet, upon closer observation, a

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pattern clear. The head, a peculiar shape, was a bubble containing two eyes
the size of golf balls, and a spade shaped nose extending to a point a foot
past the eyes. Two of the rare spotted eagle rays flying past; their wings
flapping in synch propelling them past me. Their outlines like shadows in the
distance, rapidly fading, leaving only a memory.

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