Читать книгу Into the Abyss. Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World онлайн

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Once at the bottom we strolled past a few startled holiday makers sending their groups of children into an excited chatter about the ‘deep sea divers’ that were walking through them en route to what they thought was a terribly exciting adventure.

Walking into the water to a depth that supported my body weight I bent down and pulled on my fins. One by one we flopped onto our fronts and started to snorkel out into deeper water, following the side of the cliffs on the west side of the bay.

Once we had got into about 10 metres and were approaching the end of the headland, we grouped up and then dumped all the air from our ABLJ’s. I sank slowly towards the bottom, a boulder field and kelp forest which, in the good visibility, I was able easily to see beneath me. Long kelp stalks were anchored to rocks, the fronds at their extremities waving in the gentle current.

As I sank I sensed the familiar increasing pressure on my sinuses but no matter how hard I tried to ‘pop’ my ears to equalise the pressure, I couldn’t. As I dropped down to 3 metres it became uncomfortable. By 5 metres down it was sore and I struggled to pop my ears to alleviate the pain.