The Aquarium And Trigger Wall Diving Sites, Northwest Pemba Island, Zanzibar
The Aquarium And Trigger Wall Diving Sites, Northwest Pemba Island, Zanzibar
This morning our diving boat was pretty full with people from all over the world.
There was a very friendly family of four from South Africa, although the father Luca, was a charming Italian.
Then there was Azim, the very sweet dive master from Kenya, Michael, the dive center owner who is from the Netherlands, and his girlfriend Carlotta, who is from France.
Carlotta is a wonder.
She dives with no wetsuit at all, and no BCD.
She wears only a plastic frame with straps, attached to an air-tank and a regulator.
There were also two epidemiologists from Germany and Switzerland, who were doing research about a rare tropical disease that was eradicated in most of the world years ago, but still exists in Tanzania.
They warned me not to swim in sweet water rivers and lakes while in Tanzania.
The closer these rivers are to the sea, the less likely they are to be infested by the disease-causing worms, because the salt water kills them.
The diving day was fun.
We tried to go farther south, but the visibility in the area was not great, so we changed diving sites and went to the aquarium, a reef full of cabbage-like coral that is usually sheltered.
In between the coral, live skinny eels.
I also spotted leaf fishes, which was very exciting for me.
The weather felt perfect to me.
Across Canada and the Northwest of the USA, there is an unprecedented heat wave that is claiming lives, and here we were experiencing the most pleasant temperatures both underwater and above.
If there is a strong underwater current, it really feels like gliding on invisible currents of air.
The currents pull the anemone and soft coral’s spaghetti-like arms, making them stretch in the direction of the currents and reveal their pink or purple underbellies.
I really love the sensation of floating while diving.
I am reminded of the quote by Jacques Cousteau:
“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders.
He is bolted to earth.
But man has only to sink beneath the surface of the ocean, and he is totally free.”
With friendship and freedom,
Tali
