My first scuba diving experience - Great Barrier Reef (Hastings Reef)

One time you don't care about having sand in your shoe is when that shoe is a flipper and you're on the seabed of the Great Barrier Reef feeding a turtle.  I found this to be the case, at least.

Scuba diving is an unnatural activity so learning to do it takes one back to the elemental.  Simply learn to breathe again, and anyone can master it.  This way of thinking may require a system reset but it is simple enough for the most dim-witted among us to understand.  Ah dimwits, they are all around us.  My favourite term for such people has, for a long while now, been mouth-breather.  Because of the abundance of mouth-breathers in this world, the rules of scuba diving are simplified to just a few that are easily understood.  Chief amongst these is the principle that one must at all times continue to breathe, and one should breathe normally.  Easy.  I've been breathing since the Eighties, I've got this.  

Considering myself smarter than the average merman, I listened to the training then jumped in the water to try it out without apprehension.  I managed the practical training exercises easily enough.  I felt pretty confident pretty quickly.  Having had a taste of what sights the reef has in store, I was eager to view them from this new perspective as soon as possible.  I would certainly concentrate on my breathing, but I felt ready to look for tropical fish as I did so.  Down we went.  A shark swims by.  I wish I could smile, but instead decide to keep breathing.  My dive instructor, Lucy, held my hand as we swam and that shark must have smiled as he thought how much we looked like Peter Pan and Wendy in the night sky.

We swim to the reef and there are colourful fish everywhere.  There are sponges, coral, anemone, and it's all alive.  I am in another world.  Lucy and I had already discussed our mutual love for giant clams so we found some big ones and even reached out to them to prompt them to shut their traps.  They didn't close completely, but nevertheless I was interacting with a clam.  I wanted to scream puns about being as happy as one, but decided to breathe instead.

As we went on our way, we saw a vast array of underwater life.  Other highlights include seeing a clown fish, some stationary big fish guarding a boulder, brilliant purple coral, touching some seaweed, kneeling on the sandy seabed and oh, did I mention I fed a turtle?  I fed a turtle.  It kind of nibbled my finger as it took its seaweed.  We bonded.

The thing they don't tell you about breathing normally is that one does not normally do it.  While underwater, I wanted to sigh, gasp, laugh, talk and sing (Under the Sea), but decided to breathe instead.  That was a surprisingly difficult decision to make and required constant diligence.  I have a new respect for mouth-breathers.