"Once it casts its spell it will hold you in its net of wonder forever."

As Dave Barry once said “There's nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater,you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.”

This summarises how I feel about the ocean. As much as I love being on a boat or a board going over the waves, it feels as though you're only experiencing the outside of a beautiful and unknown world. People  zealously speak of discovering new worlds, or of chartering new territory whilst completely overlooking that we know less about our oceans than we do about space. 

For me, every time that I go beneath the surface it fills me with the same sense of wonder and awe as it did the first time I discovered scuba diving. It is my form of escapism both literally and metaphorically, being immersed in a beautiful silent world that has so much to offer and discovering its secrets as I defy gravity free-falling through the water.