WELCOME TO THE (KELP) JUNGLE

Makena Matula ’24

Each step I took was like moving a semi truck as I waddled slowly and awkwardly down to shore. I guess there’s no graceful way to move when you have a massive 35-pound metal cylinder that feels like a silo strapped to your back, 25 extra pounds of weights in the pockets of your BCD, 8 millimeters of thick, dense neoprene hugging every inch of your body, and gloves so thick that you can barely bend your now sausage-like fingers. With each step I had to balance myself so as to not be pulled backwards by the comically large and heavy air tank on my back. The last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself on my first open water dive of my SCUBA certification. No way was I going to succumb to the weight of the fat demon on my back and tip over and fall stiffly backwards in front of everyone, like a tree cut down coming rigidly crashing to the ground.

As I slowly and painfully shuffled down, last minute thoughts rushed through my mind like race cars on a track. Is my air on? Does my BCD have any holes in it? Wait, did I remember to check the manual BCD inflation? Let’s hope I did. I can’t believe dive instructors have the audacity to tell us that Scuba Diving is one of the safest water sports right and then a few minutes later explain how if you ascend too quickly, nitrogen bubbles will build up in your tissue and then you will be in excruciating pain, get severely ill, and then die, or, if you don’t exhale while ascending, the air in your lungs could expand and your lungs could burst. But that doesn’t happen often... right?

I stood at the edge of the water, small waves grabbing at my feet, urging me to continue on. I had no choice, my dive buddy was already waist deep. So, in a wave of confidence, I inflated my BCD and continued on in. Once I was in deep enough, I sat back and let the water hold up the weight of my being. Suddenly, the millions of pounds on me felt like nothing.

“Ahhh…. sweet relief,” I sighed as I put on my fins and mask. I thought to myself, “I don’t know what everyone was talking about. The water’s not that cold.” Well… I spoke too soon. The frigid oceanic liquid started to seep into my boots and gloves and it dripped slowly and painfully down my neck and down my chest. It was like the prank your friends would pull on you when you were young: sticking an ice cube down the back of your shirt, and laughing as you squirmed and writhed in pain. My muscles tensed up as the ice-water slowly filled my wetsuit, and I cringed at the uncomfortable sensation.

My group started swimming out, and reluctantly, I followed, trying to not allow my facial muscles to contort in pain and attempting to maintain a stoic complexion so as to not clue the others in on my weakness to the cold. Saying we were swimming is definitely an over-glorification of what we were doing. It was more like floating on our backs kicking like beetles who can’t right themselves, since it was next to impossible to swim gracefully with all the thick gear on and various tubes protruding from places. I started to notice, to my content, that the biting cold water in my wetsuit had started to soften and warm up. Thank God. I guess wetsuits work after all. I would have appreciated that earlier though.

“All right, time to descend. I’ll see y’all down there,” my dive instructor said as she gave the sign to descend: a thumbs down.

I popped my regulator, my life support, the blessed thing keeping me from horrible death by drowning, into my mouth and took a deep breath of artificial air, sounding like Darth Vader as I did so.

Releasing the air in my BDC, I sank down, the water line rising first over my mouth, then my nose, then my eyebrows, until finally my full head was under water. The icy waters washed over my bare cheeks and kissed my lips, and the cold shock that I first felt when entering the frigid water reappeared.

Halfway down, I noticed that others were descending faster than me. Huh. I exhaled deeper and let more air out, but I wasn’t sinking any further. I kicked trying to swim down, yet some opposite force of gravity wasn’t allowing me to reach the floor. All this gear and I’m still not heavy enough??? The dive master noticed me struggling in the middle of the water column and looked at me confused. She signaled at me again to descend. No crap, lady. What does it look like I’m trying to do? With various waving of arms and pointing, I try to signal to her that I literally cannot descend. She swims up to me and yanks me down, and I grab and hold onto the rope laid down on the ground for dear life as my body tries to float up.

“God, this is so embarrassing,” I thought to myself.

The dive master then went down the line testing each of our skills. Then she got to me. She asked me to demonstrate that I can take off my mask, put it back on, and clear it of water. Now I had to let go of the line, the only thing keeping me from shooting to the surface. Oh God. This isn’t going to go well. I released my grip from the rope and started the skill. Immediately I felt my body rising and I could no longer feel the floor. The invisible force was once again pulling me up to the surface. I felt the dive master grab onto my leg to keep me down. It was like a tug of war—I was being pulled up and down simultaneously, all without my mask on, unable to see, the sharp, cold, salty water trying to seep into my eyes, flailing my arms, panicking, unable to tell where I was, what was up or down, and terrified. I felt the grip from below slip, and before I knew it, I felt air again. I was at the surface.

I was panicking as I bobbed at the surface while being thrown back and forth by the waves. My stomach started to feel unsettled. Oh no. Now is a good time to mention one fact about me: I get sea sick very easily. That unsettling feeling grew into nausea and spread throughout my whole body. Suddenly, the dive instructor appeared at the surface and asked me what happened. I told her that I didn’t have enough weight and couldn’t sink, and she gave me some extra weights that she had on her. The sickness grew.

We descended again together. Thankfully the descent went a lot smoother, and I actually had enough weight to stay down, yet now I had another problem: I felt incredibly ill, and the strong current underwater pushing me side to side just made it worse.

I don’t know how I managed to complete the skills. My stomach was churning and writhing inside of me and I felt dizzy and so incredibly ill and my internal fluids were being violently sloshed back and forth and my vision was fuzzy and started to be obscured by black splotches that were appearing in it and I couldn’t tell up from down, nor did I care and all I wanted, all that my brain could elicit from the congestion of nausea and sludge of the motion-sickness was one phrase: “Please let this end.” The sickness blurred the passage of time, but some time later we trudged out of the waves and onto dry sand, the tremendous weight of the equipment falling back onto my shoulders, crushing me under its weight.

I came clamoring dizzily back to my dad as fast as I could with the millions of pounds attached to me feeling nauseated and deathly ill. My extremities were cold and my body didn’t feel like mine and I couldn’t think straight.

“How was it?” my dad inquired.

I quivered and forced words out.

“I I ca- I don-”

I fell down onto the bench.

“I’m so sick… gonna pass out…can’t continue … I can’t do any more dives.”

“Here, why don’t you eat something and drink some water and then if you still feel sick we can go home,” I remember him telling me.

All of his words sounded like mush to my nauseous brain. He gave me a granola bar and a water bottle. My trembling hand brought the bar to my mouth. My eyes saw the bar, and my brain said, “No way.” I gagged at the thought of something entering my stomach. “No more. Please. No more,” my body said. Please. I can’t. I feel so sick. My stomach churned. My legs shook. PleaseA hand rested on my shoulder.

“I know you don’t want to eat, but at least take a few nibbles. Your body needs it.”

I forced myself to take a few weak and small bites, each one so incredibly painful, and a few small sips of water. I sat in silence and sickness as the crashing waves sounded faintly and mutedly in the background. The thick cloud of nausea started to thin out slightly. As the illness dissipated slowly, I could finally feel my body again. I regained some consciousness and my thoughts became more intelligible. My eyesight re-calibrated. I began to notice the water droplets falling from strands of my hair, the gravelly sand under my feet, and the sound of the crashing waves became more clear.

“Ok, everyone, we’re going to head back out,” the dive instructor called out.

“Do you want to go home?” my dad asked concernedly.

“No. I’ll do it. I’ll continue.” I muttered determinedly.

Was I crazy? I mean, I almost passed out a few minutes ago and I was just feeling the sickest I had ever felt before. And now I was saying that I would strap a massive metal cylinder back on my back, go back out there in the dangerously cold water, put myself in a situation where I could drown or get decompression sickness and die. Maybe I was, but I didn’t spend hours reading, learning, doing training, and drive all the way out here just to quit and not get certified.

“Are you sure Makena? It’s ok if-”

I was up and gone. Time for round two: exploring the kelp forest.

Now how does one begin to describe heaven? The one in the divine waters below, the one that I entered as I deflated my BCD and sank slowly down, lower and lower with each exhale. Towering kelp, gentle giants, slowly and delicately swaying back and forth as the currents lead them in the ritualistic dance of the ocean. Their fronds waved at me, greeting me, as if saying, “Hello beautiful soul. I see you have come to our home to seek shelter, to heal from the above world that has torn you. All are welcomed into the forest with open arms.”

I felt the comforting hug of the waters, its chill making me feel alive as ever. The thick coolness slowed my nervous system and calmed my breathing, any memory from the world above fading away in the mist and fog of cool water. Clouds of fish roamed about, changing direction at a whim and going wherever they pleased. There’s a comforting slowness to the kelp forest. There’s no rush or demand or deadline, no scramble, no expectations of the world above. A serene quiet permeates the underwater jungle, the only sounds being the bubbles we were blowing and the occasional quiet snap or tap from some organism—maybe a crab pinching its claws or a fish pecking at something or a clam snapping shut. The sun pierced through the surface and reached its rays down into the water in an attempt to feel the sandy floor for itself.

In the shade and safety of the kelp, I began to explore this world that I had not previously known. Weaving between the towers of kelp, I notice the inhabitants of this community: the thin arms of Brittle Stars protruding from the gaps in the rocks, the crabs scurrying along the floor and climbing up the stocks of kelp. The little fishies taking shelter in the kelp fronds, the anemones holding fast to their rocks, the Sea Stars slowly meandering along the ground in search of food, Bryozoans and Sponges encrusting almost every available surface. I was filled with the most innocent, pure, and magical wonder and joy seeing this entire world that I hadn’t known existed.

As time passed and our air ran low, our dive master signaled to us that it was time to ascend. Sad that my time here had come to an end for now, I scanned the beautiful surroundings one last time and ascended, watching the forest below disappear slowly.

“Until we meet again.”

As humans, we tend to navigate the Earth like we own the place, taking whatever we need. Yet, in the kelp forest, there was this overwhelming feeling of being a visitor in someone else’s home and of needing to treat it with the utmost respect and care. This experience was one that made me decide to dedicate my life to the ocean, to understanding and protecting it. I also realized my dedication, courage, tenacity, and willpower in those moments. I was feeling so horrendous, so sick, so discouraged and awful. I was on the verge of giving up, yet I didn’t. Despite everything that was happening, everything I was feeling, I decided to continue because I was so determined to get certified, so determined to prove myself, so determined to say that I didn’t quit. I’m so glad I didn’t give up, because if I did, I wouldn’t have had the life-changing experience that I had.

Often, as I’m sitting in class, listening to the clock’s hands tick, my thoughts begin to wander and I dream of the kelp forest. I long for the embrace of her waters. I think of all the little creatures. I wonder what they’re doing right now? And every so often, when I get the chance, I am reunited with her, and I get to experience the pure joy all over again.