The beauty of the underwater world...

Because, no matter how many times you dip beneath the waves, you never know what you’re going to see. Or when you’ll see it. When we came across that school of hammerheads, we’d been down for 40 minutes, seen nothing and were getting bored. Then they magically appeared.

Dive the same site 10 times, and you’ll have 10 very different experiences. One day, you’ll look in a little cave to see the huge eyes of an octopus, the next a cuttlefish will scoot past you or a moray eel will waft out and give you the evil eye.
The sheer amount of wildlife under our waters is incredible. I’ve seen hundreds of crabs crawling across the sea floor just off Weymouth, had cleaner shrimp dance on my hand in Malaysia and diced with death as a tiger shark scoped me out as a possible meal in Egypt.
ut it’s not just the creatures that fascinate me. For our oceans – both close to home and further afield – have many other wonders to show us. Mile upon mile of pristine, candy-hued coral stretching out under the sea like a Monet. Forests of what look like white Christmas trees shooting up from the seabed. Caves like cathedrals and stalactites 30 metres high. It’s endless.

t’s the sheer majesty and serenity of the ocean that appeals to me. The moment you leap off the boat, you’re submerged into a different world, an utterly silent, often eerie world, with no idea what you’re going to find.

The deeper you go, the more you leave your cares behind. Your frenetic lifestyle is left on the surface, to be replaced by one where everything moves in slow motion. All that matters is you and your dive buddy: pointing things out, covering each other’s backs and communicating without saying a word.

Then afterwards, in the bar over beers, swapping stories of what you’ve seen from your ringside seat in the world’s biggest aquarium.

And also, what you haven’t. For it’s that which spurs you on. There’s so much I haven’t seen yet and I’ve no idea when I’ll come across it.

Top of my list is a manta ray. Or a whale. Or a great white shark. Actually, on second thoughts, maybe just the first two. After all, part of the thrill of diving is living to tell the tale.