The Seahorse by Isabell Buenz
I have loved seahorses since I was a child. It started when my grandmother brought me a seahorse brooch from one of her frequent exotic travels. At the time I had no idea that the seahorse was actually very real, though also very dried and dead. This well loved present from my granny started off a small collection: jewellery (made from metal), sculptures, wall hangings and rubber stamps of these little creatures.
I never expected in a million years to see one of them for myself, except in an aquarium.
Last year, I treated myself to a scuba diving course for my 50th birthday. I was staying in a small studio apartment outside Pula in Croatia. The Orca Dive Club was conveniently two minutes walk away from my accommodation, the beach another 20 seconds further. The weather was perfect, blue sky, sunshine, a cool breeze, and warm, calm, clear water. Great conditions for sitting in the sun, working my way through dive manuals, leisurely sunbathing breaks and swimming, snorkelling and diving. Learning to dive here felt very special, not just because I fulfilled a dream of a lifetime but also due to the crew at the dive centre and my love of being under water. Couldn’t be any better … or so I thought.
On my third day my instructor Tony announced that I would dive with his wife Olga. He mentioned that Olga was good at detecting small animals, unlike him and his male instructors who were interested in showing you big octopus and bigger fish. I was looking forward to diving with Olga. We got on well and were always chatting and laughing together.
After my briefing we got kitted up and set off from outside the dive centre. I felt nervous about these shore dives and preferred it when we jumped off the pontoon or the boat into deep water. I didn’t like my clumsy backward crawls on hands and feet that seemed to be my only method of getting to water deep enough to swim.
My breathing was laboured due to my anxiety and it took me some time to calm down while we were descending. The plan was to do my exercises for the course and then to enjoy a dive along the house reef. ‘First exercise, then swim’, Olga had announced. That sounded fine by me. Today I had to pretend to be out of air and share Olga’s air supply with her. This went well and I certainly preferred it to yesterday’s training: having to take my mask off during the dive and getting a rush of sea water pushed up my nose! Exercises finished, we ‘high fived’ and started the relaxing part of our dive.
The reef in Pula could be more easily compared with the underwater world of the North Sea rather than exotic places like the Pacific or the Red Sea. Even other areas in the Mediterranean have more fish and plant life to offer as I’ve found out since that first scuba diving trip. Three Austrian divers using the dive centre were quite disgruntled about the lack of wild life to tick off their ‘must see’ list.
None of this seemed important. For me, nothing could compete with the feeling of being weightless and the calm that soon would come over me. No noise, no people, just me (well, and Olga) and the sound of my breathing. No more feelings of being clumsy, I enjoyed watching my bubbles floating up towards the light blue surface. And, unlike up there, the wild life we saw here did not ‘run’ off and hide but stay nearby or even came closer to satisfy their curiosity.
I was just happy to be under water. I wasn’t bothered that Olga took me to a desolate looking area along the reef. I had been there before with Tony, swimming over the bleak expanse of algae and sea grass that looked to me like a vast uncared for and dried up lawn. Olga was swimming slowly, zigzagging about with me contently following her around.
When she stopped she pointed to a spot within the algae. I looked. Nothing. Shrugging my shoulders and opening my palms questioning what to look for. Olga started fanning her hand carefully near one of the plants. Slowly, like one of those 3D images, a seahorse became visible. There it was, holding onto the stem of the algae looking like an intrinsic part of the plant. I was entranced. Olga kept fanning the water close to the seahorse and it let go, drifting off slightly into full view: 10 – 15 cm long, brown and feathery with a frizzy mess on top of its head, identical to its plant background. Slowly I stretched out my hand with my little finger pointing forward, carefully approaching the seahorse. After a moment of hesitation, to my astonishment and wonder, the little tail curled itself round my finger. I could feel the rough surface of the tail on my skin. I loved this creature that looked like a mythical being from a fairytale world, a living gem. I was taking in every little detail and the seahorse seemed to examine me in a similar way, watching me with its huge eyes. While holding on to me it swayed with the movement of the water. What a magical and special moment: I realised that I was crying under my mask and had forgotten everything else around me.
Eventually I moved my hand back to the ground where Olga had discovered it. I held my hand still amongst the algae and after a short while – still watching me with these big, round eyes – the seahorse let go of my finger and settled back amongst the plants.
Since then I have been diving regularly here in British waters and abroad but nothing I’ve seen and come across has touched me as much as this little dragon-like being I encountered that day.
