Conflicted At Sea

Sometimes I just wish I could enjoy experiences on a sensory level without my conscience having to clear its phlegmy throat to remind me of its presence. You know what I mean? Today was one of those days. I have been looking forward to Pigeon Island since I planned this trip from my couch back home. I love water and have a comfort and interest in things aquatic. This would be my only opportunity to do some snorkeling during my stay in Sri Lanka and I am jacked.

My day starts off poorly with a major misjudgment in lagoon depth that results in a quick but fatal dousing of my camera in seawater. I am pissed. Here I am headed to a tropical island paradise and I no longer have my right hand man, my Nikon. This trauma is not easy to put out of my mind but I reroute my focus to the mental imagery that I will need to collect and hold on to for the next few decades of my life.

I ride to Pigeon Island in a boat where I am an addition to a Russian party who are staying in a swanky resort down the beach from my sweat pit that I am currently calling home. No one in the group is particularly interested in me and I accept that this will be a day of just me with the fishes. Truth me told, I prefer it this way.

The island is small and covered in white coral beach. The water is that dreamy azure blue we all picture when we think of an island paradise. Just steps off the beach into the water are boulder formations that look somehow both miniature and gigantic at the same time. The palm trees perform their hallmark sway in the breeze routine. When I approach through the dappled shade of flowering trees I see there are already some visitors here. Most of them are international, many are wearing life jackets and all of them are ridiculously loud given the wonder of the surroundings.  I remind myself that I will soon be in a blissful underwater world and hurry to gear up.  The water has such salty buoyancy and I am strong enough a swimmer that I opt out of using flippers. I spit into my mask and attract a few stares. And then, the gaseous world in which I live disappears and I am drawn in to a peaceful liquid universe.

It doesn’t take long to find the fish although abundant they are not. The longer I explore the more variety I see. There are fish in every hue of every color and some in colors that I have never even imagined. They are spotted, striped and speckled with some having a ludicrous mix of all three. I watch a beautiful, pink mosaicked fish move slightly while grazing on coral to show that in fact it is orange, and then move again to tell me it is silvery brown. They are as big as my forearm and as small as my fingernail. I am in awe of their ingenious beauty. I see a brightly colored, flat fish make some fluttery movements that so amuse me I laugh and choke and am forced up for air. It doesn’t take me long to learn how to smile with a snorkel in my mouth.

A four-foot long haggard looking shark cruises by me and I shriek into my snorkel. Surely, this is normal I think to myself and boldly force myself to carry on. While I am hovering and observing a transparent, pencil shaped creature a Sri Lankan man appears and enthusiastically gives me an underwater two thumbs up. I agree and gesture back. He motions for me to follow him out further and I comply. At one point he grabs for my hand and hugs it close to his chest to bring me along which, admittedly, is something I am not entirely sure about what to do. I allow it and he leads me to a deeper more plentiful area that I would not have found otherwise. Eventually I pull my hand away and surface to clear my mask. He asks if I am okay and I say yes but that I would like to head back. Like an underwater Tarzan he dives down deep along the bottom and quickly undulates away from me, turning to wave goodbye.

Now wouldn’t it be grand if this were where the story ends? But that pesky conscience, that part of me that is sensitive to those living things around me and the quality of their existence, grabs a firm hold of me. I find it impossible not to notice the lack of color in the coral, although I can see that it is trying with glimmers of pale blue or purple here and there. But it is dull and covered mostly in what looks like scum. I do not know a great deal about fish but I do know that these beautiful and intricate beings were made to look this way for a reason. This reason is camouflage. These fish are about as camouflaged as I, myself, have been while wandering the streets of Colombo and Jaffna as a white woman. Not at all.

And this concerns me. So much so that I have to get out of the water to find my guide and attempt a broken conversation. I learn that this is, in large part, due to the tsunami. It makes sense, the ocean turned itself over and disturbed its bottom, causing a dust that now chokes the coral. An act of God, an act of Nature, bad luck. Whatever you call it, it’s no one’s fault. But you would have to be living with both of your fingers in your ears and humming pretty loudly not to know that our oceans and the coral and fishes within them are in big trouble.  Reefs are dying all over the world due largely to the human race’s consumption and output.

I think about this as I heavily reapply my sunscreen. Huh. It occurs to me that I am a part of that output, directly, today. I could not be out snorkeling in 40-degree heat without sunscreen. Maybe that means that I should not be out snorkeling. On a tree swing I sit and contemplate this conundrum. Damned conscience.

Somehow I come to conclude that I will go in one last, short time. Give my inconsequential, though sincere, thanks and respect to these creatures and their home. I feel conflicted and not entirely happy with my decision.  In the shallows I swim past a decomposing pair of men’s underwear. Bits of plastic catch my eye, glimmering in the sun light like iridescent fish.  A plastic bag brushes up against my forehead. As I swim around collecting my final memories, I silently apologize to the inhabitants of this wounded place. I apologize for the film my sunscreen is leaving in their lungs, and for the boat gas that brought me here that pollutes what they breathe and eat. And, I apologize for a man who somehow lost his shorts.