Free Diving White Banks Dry Rocks

July 1, 2009 · Filed Under Current, Lore of the Sea 

Will at the Tugster blog suggested that a number of fellow water bloggers post on a common theme today. He suggested swimming.  

I feel like I have been swimmming for most of my life. I spent my early years in Dallas, Texas which is to say that I spent a goodly portion of most summers in a swimming pool. When the temperature climbs over one hundred degrees and the pavement seems to radiant more heat than the blazing sun itself,  there weren’t too many better places to be. 

The problem with pools is that they are boring. There is very little to admire beyond the skill of the plasterer and the shine of the tiles.  Years later I would discover what swimming was really all about, at least for me, when I first dove on White Banks Dry Rocks, a shallow reef near Key Largo.

It was a short ride out in an open launch.   I jumped overboard into an almost overwhelming explosion of colors and shapes.  Surrounded by a field of steel gray eel grass was a small forest of coral - deep orange brain coral domes rising from pure white sand, purple and red sea fans and sea plumes waving gently in the swell.  And the fish – schools of iridescent blue tangs, parrot fish in a rainbow of colors, butterfly fish in brilliant yellows and black and one huge school of glass minnows that formed a shimmering wall of quicksilver suspended just above the reef.   

I did a surface dive and swam toward the wall of glass minnows. The school didn’t move, it just sort of opened up and swallowed me as I swam into it.  In a moment I was completely surrounded by countless tiny silver minnows swimming rapidly back and forth, flashing and dancing all around me, never close enough to touch, but not that so far either. It felt as if I was inside a shimmering silver sphere which opened again as swam on, returning me to the reef where I quickly kicked back to the surface for air.

Most folks call swimming with a mask and snorkel – snorkelling. I prefer the term – free diving.   That is always the way I feel – free – encumbered only by the amount of time that I can hold my breath.  I am a certified scuba diver and I enjoy it, but I hate the amount of gear – the tank, the BC, the regulator, hoses and gauges. Free diving on White Banks Dry Rocks I  could laze along on the surface or dive down to skim just above the sandy bottom between the coral heads, rolling sidewides to see the large grouper or parrot fish hiding in the shadows.  The antennas of spiny lobesters jutted out from holes and the delicate but threatened spines of black sea urchins warned me not to get too close.

There is a definate downside with falling in love with diving in the warm and  crystalline waters of a coral reef.  Suddenly dark, cold and murky lakes hold little appeal.  I do try not to be too much of a warm-clear water snob.  A year ago I actually went snorkelling in Alaska, which was exactly as stupid as it sounds.

So I may not be the first to jump into cold water or even to jump into a pool, but I will always long to return to swimming on the reef with only a mask, snorkel and fins.

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Comments

One Response to “Free Diving White Banks Dry Rocks”

  1. Swim Day: Splash! « tugster: a waterblog on July 1st, 2009 11:55 pm

    [...] Old Salt takes us diving in Bonaire and Key Largo. [...]

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