Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
The world that exists underwater is almost entirely different from our own. In Raja Ampat, a collection of islands in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province, there exists some of the richest marine biodiversity in the world.
On a recent visit, I was able to do multiple dives. The water was warm and the sun was bracing. I hadn't been diving in some years and it took a minute to adjust to the discomforts of being deep beneath the sea, relying on a tank for air and goggles for vision. But once past that, I found myself listening to my breath as I floated gently amongst the foreign inhabitants of the sea.
They watched me as much as I watched them. I found myself constantly distracted and awed by one beautiful thing to another — colorful coral, sparkling schools of fish and the occasional shark flashing by.
Getting to visit this world while scuba diving is always fleeting; you can only stay for as long as there is air for you to breathe in your tank. But those moments of being surrounded by schools of colorful fish like bigeye snapper, watching anemones sway in the current, and catching glimpses of sharks and sea stars are worth the limited visit. The end of the air in my tank came too soon. But climbing out of the sea after the last dive, I could tell I was tired and ready to rest where oxygen was freely available.
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