Under the Sea

You’ll hear aspirations of traveling to different planets with the idea that you’re going to a different world. With the idea that you can only find that other world through space travel. Wrong. If you want to know the feeling of traveling to another world, go scuba diving and become a visitor on your own planet. Diving gives you the opportunity to be in the presence of so many majestic creatures. Yesterday I booked an incredible trip with Dive Sint Maarten and it was incredible! Shoutout to our guide Petro, who kept the trip light-hearted and fun while still maintaining a safe and adventurous experience. The trip was a basic wreck diving experience where we visited sunken ships or infrastructure that now support marine life on the Dutch side of the island. One of the wrecks we visited was a cargo ship and we got to swim through it for a brief amount of time, which was both really cool and scary. The highlight of the trip was swimming next to a sea turtle, effortlessly gliding through the water. The other highlight was finding an octopus hiding inside a rock crevasse. What a treat! As you can see in the photo featured for this post, the octopus was camouflaging itself by changing the color and shape of its body. In an attempt to hide from us, the octopus disguised itself as a conch shell. How cool! I saw other wildlife too, like barracuda, jack fish, lobster, reef sharks and huge sting rays. The reef sharks kept to themselves and didn’t swim close to us, so I wasn’t too worried about them. Although I have to say, the sting rays were massive. I remember swimming close to the bottom (60ft) when Petro pointed at something just to my left and a HUGE sting ray was maybe 4ft away. They used the sand to cover themselves and blend into the surroundings, which is why I missed it entirely. All you could see were the eyes and stinger poking out and the impression of a large flat disk on the sandy bottom. In all, it was a great trip and I highly recommend diving with Dive Sint Maarten if you get the chance.

Here are come other cool photos from the dive: