A Waltz Out of the Blue
by Bashir Cassimally
The waters of Blue Bay are not as blue as the name suggests but more of a greenish aquamarine hue. That is until one goes in. At knee level, the greenish blue colour fades away and the water looks all of a sudden clear, so clear that one can see below the surface as one would through a glass of drinking water. It is time to slip on the mask and the fins, and head to the coral reefs for a snorkelling break.
Hovering on the water surface and peering down into a sea garden of all imaginable colours is possibly the closest one can come to a hawk gliding over the forest, moving its sharp eyes to pick up any movement of creatures below. It is the ultimate contemplation. A complete let go, rid of gravity and allowing the buoyancy of the sea water to take over and set one free. Free in spirit, free from all the thoughts, good and less good, imprinted in one’s brain that come knocking at the doors of our subconsciousness.
The sea garden of corals has been constructed by millions of tiny animals, polyps, all living in symbiosis with other organisms. The corals are so varied in colour, shape and size. The names befit them. The stag horns and finger corals are pointed ones which provide refuge to a multitude of small fishes in an astonishing display of colours. The table and plate corals are horizontal and often multi-layered sheltering the fishes and other organisms as soon as a potential predator comes into view. The mushroom and brain corals are boulder-like formations emerging from the sea bed to greet the smaller fishes coming to congregate around them.
The butterfly fish, often yellow in colour, is almost as slim as a pancake and egg-shaped with the snout emerging from the smaller side to constantly peck corals in search of small organisms that it feeds upon. It possesses beautiful stripes, sometimes linear and sometimes concentric, and floats about the coral reefs as a butterfly does on flowers, inland. There are also other types of fishes that capture the attention due to their mind-boggling appearances. There is the flutemouth, almost translucent in colour with a flute-like appearance, as its name suggests, and small eyes in front. It likes to remain still near the surface, making believe it is a floating object. The flutemouth is able to suck in seawater like a pipette with its long snout sifting the smaller organisms. The boxfish swells itself to a box-like shape, which with its bright spots makes it a very decorative box. The triggerfish is shaped like a three dimensional rhomboid ready to set off at a minimum disturbance. Its bright colours earned it the name of picasso fish. The goatfish with whiskered feelers down their chins prefer to graze on sand patches close to the corals. They are ever in search of buried invertebrates that they uncover with their funny whiskered-looking feelers.
The coral formations and their resident fishes are so fascinating to watch that one can stay suspended over for hours, in ecstasy. No two snorkelling trips are ever alike. There is always something more to discover, to learn and to relish from the reefs. There is one trip that I particularly cherish and will always carry in my heart. I was swimming in the park when a presence nearby made itself felt. I tend to become fidgety whenever a fish longer than a mere quarter of a metre flashes past. But this one was different. I could sense it gliding past effortlessly and smoothly. I turned slowly to the left to see a turtle swimming alongside, by no means resentful or fretful of me. Instead it was content to accompany me side by side over a distance of maybe twenty metres in what must have been the most graceful dance I was ever privileged to have been honoured with.
The turtle dived to a finger coral formation. I hovered above as it pecked the coral bits unearthing small invertebrates with a mouth that looked like the beak of a bird of prey. It was a hawkbill turtle with distinctive overlapping scales, tooth-shaped, on its carapace. A hawkbill can live up to fifty years. Our friend was in comparison a youngster, about half a metre long, but an intrepid and probing one who proved right the setting up of the national park.
Most species of turtles including the hawkbills are critically endangered. The hawkbill turtles can be seen, though rarely, in the Indian Ocean islands. An encounter with one of these most graceful of creatures, who has been living on this planet for the past one hundred million years, is a chance to be remembered. A waltz with one is a blessing.
Originally published in The Island Review, October 2017
Postscript
Five years later in 2022, the changes due to global warming have become conspicuous. The corals under stress in the warmer waters have expelled the algae to avoid further tissue damage, in turn causing them to bleach. Without the algae, the corals become bereft of colour exposing their white skeletons. They also lose an important source of food, which the algae supplied through photosynthesis.
At the moment the corals are not dead though more susceptible to disease and death. But happily, they are still teeming with fish. Though the hawkbill turtle is still rare, the green sea turtles are fairly common and some are huge in size, weighing about a hundred kilograms.
