The Wandering Weirdfish

We were meant to have left before sundown, but I'd gone on an inter-tidal walk, and while rushing back, lost my way, got distracted by a beautiful snake and missed my ride. When I finally reached the boat on North Wandoor beach, the sun had sunk low into the sky and I was out of breath. My mind reeled from the walk which had led us from farmland, through rainforest and scrub until we emerged onto a rocky stretch of beach.
We waded out to the doonghi, clambering over whitening driftwood abandoned to the shores when the 2004 tsunami lashed the Andaman Islands. The boat sliced stealthily through the swirling blanket of water. When we reached the dive site, our boat boy cut the engine and everything went very dark and very quiet. The island dissolved into a glimmering silhouette in the distance. The boat rocked gently as we kitted up in the starlight.
It had been a week since I’d landed in Port Blair, and I had already fallen deeply in love with the colour of the ocean, the feeling of weightlessness underwater, the bug-eyed mudskippers and astonishing mangroves. Staying at the Andaman & Nicobar Environment Team base in Wandoor, each day was an education in biodiversity and diving.
Even on that night, my eighth on the island, I could barely tear my eyes from the sky, brimming over with stars.
The first time I dived into the ocean at night, I felt as though I had slipped through a gap in the universe. Forgetting myself for a moment, I back flipped off the boat into the blackness. Suddenly, definitions of light and dark, colour and time were blurred. All I could hear was my own breathing, long and slow. We cruised through the darkness, seeing only what the beam of our torches illuminated –a giant grouper, curious octopi, barracuda circling above us. Lobsters peeped out of their holes, while a lone sweetlips snoozed near a patch of coral. The water was cool, the current gentle.
As we hovered mid-ascent, we switched off our torches and the ocean turned into a reflection of the night sky. We were swimming amid stars. The bio-luminescence glowed like a thousand glinting shards of glass, and with every movement of our arms, our fins, the phosphorescence lit up again. I surfaced, face skyward, and for one surreal moment I was disoriented –not sure if I was underwater or above it. The darkness was seamless from ocean to sky. Back on the boat, we drank spiced black chai and ate biscuits. And then we lay on our backs as we returned to shore, quiet and dreamlike.