Imagine you are a one-celled organism, swishing your tail through the primordial soup. What would you see way back then. Would it by little more than bare rock still steaming or would it be a dense life teeming? May I leave that to your imagination?
Let's take a giant leap to modern time and view the natural anarchy underwater through a diving mask with an integrated video camera. I have made a collage of several shallow free-dives to around five meter concluded by a couple of deeper ones, a bit over twelve.
You descend on my forehead into a world of kelp weed, swaying ever less, away from the surface. Stationary life forms, like the spherical virgin white sea urchins, clutch themselves to the weed belts, and behold, a fish, seeking shelter, no curiosity there, you're just an indefinite danger to it. In irregular steps the terraces are scattered across the drop, with deep cracks and mysterious hollows, caressed by the strokes of the ever present kelp.
Nothing exotic, really, but if you find the footage monotonous, hold your breath and savour the unveiling of this aquarian atmosphere. After a while it feels you're sauntering through a village. Familiar scenes emerge and every now and then you tarry at a promising articulation. And while the bottom is wallpapering by you wonder where the dolphin is.
A cloud of bubbles rises from the deep like speech-clouds in a diver cartoon: 'Check us out if you dare!'. And on your single breath you set your controls for the dark deep and hunt the bubbles down. And there they are crawling, bright yellow and blue, waving a torch, suspended in stabjacks, reaching out for where she is, majestically gliding by in nonchalant curiosity, Dusty.
Up, up and away from this forbidden airless realm, up to the silvery height, faster than the bubbles that escape with you, through your mirror image at last, blow your snorkel, then gasp. And hallelujah, again you live to tell…