Our time underwater is brief. The moments from descent to decompression measured into a few hundred breaths. One tank at a time, we race towards 10 dives. 50 dives. 100. 1000. The schools of fish which can only be described as “teeming”, the rays and the squid and even the sea turtles, they become familiar sights. Old territory. You are aware on some level that you’re “underwater” but there is a dullness to your senses. You’re floating by and you’re seeing, but you’re not really…there.

But every now and then, something snaps you out of it. I’m not underwater. I am in outer fuckin’ space. I have landed on a strange new world. The plants here are hard, and some of them sting. And the bugs. Oh god, the bugs:

We float for a few moments above this strange planet of psychedelic glowing space slugs.

And suddenly even the lowliest little fish is an ugly grey miracle. We remember why we’re in love.

It’s a sickness, this diving business. Gets in your bones, and doesn’t let you go. Sends you back under, back to the craggy expanses of an alien world, searching. They say once you pop the cork on your 100th tank…there’s no turning back.

December 18th, 2011. Kikai-jima, Japan. 96 tanks of pressurized air. And counting.