Life and depths

When the land on a paradise island above water is so beautiful, you'd be forgiven for not wanting to have a look at what's beneath the waves. When the green tassels of palm leaves bent to touch the translucent teal of the sea and the warm breeze whipped up a fine mist of sugar-white sand that stuck to my hot, damp skin and wouldn't rub off, for me there was little temptation to move from my lazy spot under the puffs of cloud and go snorkelling. But the Andamans are known for their beautiful underwater life, so I overcame the strong urge to continue busily achieving nothing.

I lifted my sleep-dazed body voluntarily out of bed at 7am and hopped onto the rattling, stubborn bicycle I'd hired and pedalled drowsily through the still-quiet, thick green air to meet my companions for the day. They were an English couple Louise and James and a Canadian lady, Ellen, all of whom I'd met the day before.

We were heading to a nearby beach - Elephant Beach - to have a go at snorkelling. The others had all done it before, and James is also a diver, so I was the only novice. We took a Jeep to the start of the elephant logging track we had to follow for half an hour to get to the beach. My hard-working flip-flops were not the most helpful footwear and I slipped and stumbled on the rutted, ragged track. Here and there elephant tracks like dinner plate indentations in the soft mud marked the route we should take. The walk was a trek through the primeval; through ancient jungle that was every shade of green. Leaves big enough to wrap a small child in unfurled to the hot air their stiff, nodding stems that sprouted alongside the path. Foliage draped foliage, which in turn draped other foliage, until the trees, vines and creepers were knitted together into a blanket of moist greenery. Skyscraping trees rose, dead straight and neck-crickingly high, their bleached trunks thrusting up into the top canopy of the forest and fanning out into an umbrella of leaves. Below these, another layer of lower growth sprouted and pushed, searching always for the hot, white sunlight. Lower still bushes exploded in clouds of rattling, hard green leaves, rolling like clouds between the taller trees. The spaces left between all of these were garlanded with thick fat vines and creepers, aerial roots and floating invisible webs of spiders. The air, already warm and thick with the smell of vegetation, seemed to stick itself to our skin, coating it with a glisten, a sheen of sweat.

I was amazed by the thickness, the tumble, the multitudes, the density, the solidity of plant life. Where the land rose up, the foliage rose with it, climbing, growing, stretching and foaming at the top with a crest of greenery, a solid wall, a silent, softly shifting tsunami of vegetation.

Nearing the beach we had to pass through a tidal mangrove swamp which was now, at low tide, a flat grey mud, patterned with the scuttling, hurrying activity of mud skippers and hermit crabs. The area had been badly damaged by the 2004 tsunami and was, even now, a hot, silent accusation of the disaster, a now-still crash of torn and shredded roots and upturned trees. Bleached silver grey, their tangled, hard outlines stretched up to the soft blue sky overhead, in a strange, ugly, grasping, shocking beauty. The ripped-up roots had long since been washed of their clinging mud and the ragged broken limbs of snapped-off branches and trunks had been softened and blurred by the years, the sun and the sea. But it was still an eerie and unnerving sight.

In front of us, the mangrove widened out into a tiny strip of tidal beach that curved round into a sweet little bay. Somewhere out there was the reef we'd come to snorkel. The sea was its ever-perfect aquamarine clarity, melting and blurring into petrol blue and beyond.

I had been told many times by many people on the island that much of the coral reefs around the Andamans were dead and bleached, due to a heatwave a couple of years back when the seawater had reached 32 degrees, killing off the top layer of coral. It still supported some fish life and though it was beginning to re-generate, much of it was still damaged. So I knew not to expect much from the coral itself, but that the fishes were still worth seeing.

Nervously I put on my snorkel mask: I am not a fan of enclosed spaces, especially ones that force your body to behave in ways it naturally resists. The paradox of snorkelling apparatus is that one part - the mask - prevents you from doing the one thing that will drown you, namely breathing in underwater, while the other part - the mouthpiece - makes sure you are doing the one thing that will keep you alive: also breathing in underwater.

Enclosing my eyes and nose in airtight security, I couldn't breathe through my nostrils and was forced to mouth-breathe, an unnatural action that I fought momentarily with an adrenalin burst of anxiety. Once my brain understood the necessity, the panic subsided. I slipped in the mouthpiece, bit down on the rubber teeth clamps and began to breathe carefully, concentratedly through the tube. A jet of nerves, sharp and cold, rushed through me, raising goosebumps all over me. But somewhere behind the fear, I felt a calmness that told me I could overcome this terror, I could master its clammy grip on me. It was that, or pride that wouldn't allow me to fail before even putting my head in the sea. Gently, slowly I lowered my face into the water. Its cool touch soothed and calmed me. Through the smudgy hired mask, the white sand seabed shone back at me, blank and empty for the moment. It encouraged me with its purity and benign appearance. I watched with interest as my hair fanned out around me, waving softly, becoming its own form of seaweed, drifting, undulating. The sound of my breath in my water-silenced ears was loud, scratchy and eerie.

I knew I would have to swim a little way out to the coral reef to have a chance of seeing anything, as there would be no fish close to the beach, so I struck out. The water was choppy and wthin a few strokes, a swell washed over the top of the tube, leaking into my mouth. This was a moment I'd dreaded.

'If you get water in the pipe, just blow it out,' James had explained breezily on the beach, and then he was gone. Now panic lurched at my guts and I fought the overwhelming instinct to wrench my head out of the water, pull out the tube and spit out the salty water. Again my little voice of calm behind my fear spoke to me from somewhere beyond my understanding and, not really knowing what I was doing, I snorted out the water in a sharp whoosh of breath from the bottom of my lungs. I carefully breathed in again, my heart pounding. It worked! The pipe was clear and I was able to breathe normally again. Elated that I'd not drowned within minutes, my confidence soared.

I swam on. The sand was still flat and empty, the water, still clear and glassy. As waves occasionally broke over my tube I snorted them away contemptuously, like an impatient aquatic elephant. I began to relax and feel comfortable. My body bobbed and swung back and forth with the movement of the waves. And I started to become aware of other sensations: such as discovering that when I stretched my arms out with each stroke, my bikini bottoms were looser than I'd realised. They were holding up, though... just.

Now I began to wonder when the reef would appear, when suddenly I was in the middle of a cloud of bright fish. I gasped in water-muffled delight. They were the most elegant creatures I'd ever seen. They were large and flat and the most elegant mother-of-pearl grey and painted, as if with a feather-soft brush, along top and bottom fins with a band of primrose yellow. As they moved, flexing sinuously in the currents, their flat bodies seemed to disappear against the pale sand, leaving only their stripes visible, swirling and tumbling, like yellow petals through blue air. I reached out to touch these angel-beings, so near did they seem, I thought I could brush them with my fingertips. But they were further away than they looked and danced shyly away from my white outstretched fingers. I felt a strange sense of profound loss that I couldn't touch these other-worldly nymphs but had to watch from a distance, as a child with her nose pressed against the cold outside of a twinkling window at a party she cannot join. I stopped and hovered, not wanting to scare them, watching delighted as they glided back and forth in front of me, a parade, a display that seemed to be for me alone. Slowly they drifted off and I followed.

Suddenly there was the coral reef, not a vivid jumble and pile of colour and texture, but a brooding grey-brown mass. Great pillowy domes were heavy, grey and rippled as brains, while truncated fingers of branched coral stood stark and stunted like trees without leaves or life. They seemed to stretch dead fingers towards the very sun that had killed them. As I floated in horror over this dead landscape the slow, rasp of my breath resounding in my head, was the only thing I could hear. It was like the soundtrack to the end of the world. Everything seemed to be covered with a fine, slimy browny-green algae that made what should have been a place of life look like a mouldering, mossed graveyard. This expanse of death and decay seemed to spread out as far as I could see in the clear water.

A terrible, choking fear suddenly gripped me. I'm not sure why that first sight of the desolate coral scared me, but it did. Maybe it was because it looked like a deserted city after a terrible apocalypse. Its few angel-bright fish were like survivors of some suffocating, creeping disaster, gliding between the dead domes looking, searching, haunted, like refugees.

Or maybe it was the shock of the unknown. I have never seen coral in its natural state before and certainly not in such dark, horrfyinh shades of death. The scab browns, pus greens and rotting greys spoke of disease, illness and grim survival, rather than the vivid paintbox shades of bright life and vibrant health. Though such post-apocalyptic horror was not caused by man but by nature itself, it was no less shocking.

But there was life - as the pearl and yellow fish disappeared (I don't know the name), they were replaced by parrot fish: black and yellow striped beauties, they buzzed around happily like underwater bees.

But my unspecified dread remained, tamed and distracted but not removed by the colourful fish. The coral felt like an unknown landscape, where dark corners held a dark fear I didn't understand. Was it the threat, ingrained from childhood, of monsters lurking in dark, dank places in mythical fairytale lands? Of beasts and demons hidden from view, waiting to pounce, of things that go bump in the night - or the sea? It wasn't a fear of specific threats such as sharks or crocodiles (although it maybe should have been of the latter, as an American tourist was killed in 2010 by a croc very near where we were swimming!), it was more a fear of the unseen, making itself seen suddenly and unexpectedly. Although I have watched many of the Blue Planet-type documentaries and been in wonder and awe at the sheer incomprehensible diversity of species, form, texture and function of the sea's creatures, even via a TV small screen, some of the deep-sea dwellers have still provoked horror and disgust in me. I find myself appalled by their ugly, alien faces, their slimy pallid skin, pale from lack of light. Pretty, 'vacuous', colourful fish of the type that I saw now, held no fear, with their blinking eyes and synchronised moves, a ballet below the waves that makes me smile.

This fear is the possibility, the maybe, the perhaps of monsters. In reality I know the ugly ones are hidden, buried in deep, dark ocean trenches I would never venture into, but the knowledge of them, even though they are not - and will not be - visible here below me in these shallow, harmless waters makes me fear the contents of these bright, placid open waters.

But the coral is starting to regenerate and here and there a 'brain' flushes with a pale yellow or a lilac shade that may or may not hint at the brightness of its former beauty. Some clusters seemed to be shedding their scarred, dead brown tissue, the organism beneath, fresh and tender like a newly-healed wound. Every so often a wiggly line among the grey showed up bright, electric blue. This, I later found out was probably the edge of the lip of a giant scallop shell and not new coral, but the luminosity of its colour cheered me and gave me hope that life was returning.

Now, below me, I could make out the shape of other, murkier citizens of of this once-bright underwater world. A large dirty brown fish, its body almost indistinguishable against the sea floor, pecked lightly at the slimy coral and, as he turned and his side caught the sun, he glowed with an irridescent rainbow sheen, like petrol spilled on water, his fins shimmering with tiny rainbows. He was a sorry, lumpy, heavy-looking creature, but his gentle, subtle brilliance made me love him as much as the other louder inhabitants. He was perfect for this place: his dingy, drab first impression was lit up with sparks of brilliance, just like the regenerating coral.

Nearby, a shoal of smaller matt black fish with little white flecks milled around, like a crowd of Goths on a street corner, waiting for something to happen. Then, as quickly as they'd appeared, the fish melted away, leaving me with nothing more than the dead coral again. I swam on, feeling again the twinges of fear. I lifted my head out of the water to get my bearings and as I did, nearby James' head broke the surface too.

'There seems to be more fish at the margins rather than at the centre of the reef,' he called. 'OK,' I called back, "I'll have a look.' I ducked my head back in and headed towards him, the tendrils of my hair partially obscuring my vision. I was heading further out towards the open sea and the deeper water was getting colder against my skin. There was still no sign of more fish, only the sinister mounds and shadowy bumps of the reef, when suddenly that too disappeared. Below me the coral dropped away abruptly and beyond it were the vast blue depths. Now I really felt the Fear. I couldn't see anything but this underwater cliff, plunging off into nothingness, deep unfathomable, unseeable, cold blue water. It terrified me. This absence of life, of light, of anything. Its void made my stomach flip and my throat constrict. Even as I turned my back on it and quickly swam back to the shallower, paler waters, I found myself asking what it was that scared me so much?

On land, life is always with us: on the surface, above, below, together with us, it exists without us always being aware of its presence. But this under-sea emptiness was a lack of life (although of course I know it's there), an absence of presence, like some before-now unrealised premonition of death, an absence of life, of being. Its nothingness filled me with dread.

I bit down harder on my mouthpiece as if to reassure myself of my own physical presence and with horrible fascination, I turned slowly back and went to look at the Edge of Nothing again. I looked but I couldn't bring myself to swim out over the margin of the reef and look, suspended above, into the empty deep. I couldn't take my place over the void without the fear returning. I hadn't the courage or the desire to know the unknown, to hang, untethered to life and reality, over that vast blue death.

I headed back to the beach. I decided, if any of the others asked, that my excuse for getting out would be that I had got cold in the deeper water. They didn't ask. I had definitely been chilled though not by the low temperature. Back on the white sand, the shining water looked inviting again, the curl of its foaming waves beckoning to me to come back in. But I was not fooled. I knew my fear would always be out there waiting to meet me at the Edge of Nothing. I think my underwater explorations began and ended there.