Celine

 25

Ecological design and research

Diving since 2016

• It was just a casual conversation with a friend. We were both taking the bus back home from a party, and she was like, “Eh you want to learn diving?” And I was like, “Yeah sure, why the hell not?” Because at that point in time I guess I was a fresh student in uni and you just wanna try everything. I just wanted to do something crazy every summer. So that’s how it started. Didn’t expect for me to become who I am today because of diving, I suppose, but it became a big part of my life and who I am today.

  
  

• So it was a pool session and the instructor was teaching us how to clear our mask and I think I didn’t take the instruction well the first time. What you’re supposed to do is tilt your head up and blow into your mask to let the bubbles out. I was just keeping my head down the whole time when I was underwater. I couldn’t see and I started to panic, but then I recalled what he said right before we went down: “If you forget everything else, just remember to breathe.” Because sometimes when you find that things are not going right, you’ll panic and you’ll stop breathing. And that’s not good when you’re diving because you’re surrounded by water. I guess in that moment I started to panic but I felt like “Oh shit. I have to remember what he told me,” right? So I just paused, I took a breath, I was trying to reflect on what I wasn’t doing right and I remembered it was because I wasn’t tilting my head. So I managed to clear that drill and it was fine. I think that was a very fundamental way in which I’ve learnt to do diving. You just have to remember how to breathe and I’ve taken it away out of the water as well. You just have to focus on understanding yourself and I think that part of diving has taught me something new about myself and also not to take my body for granted, I suppose.

  
  

• The first one that made me realise how the ocean is something that doesn’t belong to us and it’s a home for other creatures, was when I was on a dive in Pulau Weh. It was a very simple dive, we were just going to see these geysers underwater. It was nothing fantastic, it wasn’t pelagics or whatever but on that dive I had an encounter with a pufferfish. It came really close to me and it was my first time being so close to fish. As a beginner diver you tend not to go so close to the creatures or go so close to the coral because you know you don’t have the control when you’re near them. So anyway, the fish came to me and I started to panic. I was like, “Oh no, is it going to hit my face?” or whatever. I guess being up close with that fish made me realise that, “Hey, actually, I’m scared because I know that this is not my territory and the ocean doesn’t belong to humans.” It was a profound moment I guess, I just realised that it’s because I don’t belong here and it’s not my space so it sort gave me that respect and realisation for things that belong in the ocean. It’s their home and it’s not mine.

  
  

• And maybe sometimes we forget because, you know, we wear the equipment and we think that humans can conquer anything, right? Like we are always breaking new frontiers and stuff like that but... Yeah, in that moment I was like, “Yeah, we’ve become confident in saying that mankind can always break barriers and reach new frontiers.” But sometimes we forget that some of these places don’t belong to us, like in terms of first ownership.

  
  

• Initially it was just for the dives. I learnt it because I wanted a new experience but I didn’t really expect to meet a lot of divers who either think like me. Or in between dives when we decompress we talk about stuff, right? And I realised, “Oh, actually there’s this side of diving that makes this experience very holistic.” You get to meet people who come from very, very different walks of life but you all have that same consciousness. That diver consciousness that you talk about, right? How we love the ocean and - I guess every diver has this thing in common. Like, you have this desire to want to see something new or to explore somewhere, but at the same time it’s about respecting where you come from also? It was something unexpected that I took away from diving and actually a lot of my close friends today are people whom I know either from diving or got close to because of the ocean. 

  
  

• Yeah, the lockdown forced me to sit still and be where I am instead of constantly escaping through travel and diving. I guess diving, the reason why everyone loves it so much is because you’re away from everything else and with water surrounding you, you just have to focus on the present, where you are at the moment, you don’t have to worry about external factors. It’s more of an inward-looking thing.

• I guess the main peeve for me is visibility. I always feel like the reason why I dive is to feel small and you only can get that feeling when you can see how wide the ocean is when you’re in it. You just feel like everything is right in front of you. You just don’t have that sense of scale, I suppose.

• I won’t force them to fall in love with it. But at the very least to just respect it. Respect that firstly it doesn’t belong to you - you can’t just do whatever you want with it, you can’t take it for granted, you know? Respect because you understand that it’s not just a body of nothingness. Everything is connected... Whatever you do to it, it would come back to bite you in the ass later. So at least you understand from that point of view that you always have to be humble in your actions. Not to people, but to the environment. I think not many people in society understand that respect is not just for a person. Respect is also for a space.

• It’s always like a background thing, right? But actually it’s much more connected to us that we can see physically.

• We were just sharing our woes on how very few people feel the same level of conviction as us because firstly, a lot of kids don’t have that love for nature.

• The more I dive I realise the more I don’t know. And it’s okay to not know because at the same time this is not my domain. So it’s just teaching me about respect. You don’t always have to know everything all the time. And it’s okay to always be in wonder, I feel. I guess that’s what the ocean taught me.