At Sea
Oh my…it is sunny, there is no wind, and the sea is almost flat. We could be on an inland waterway, somewhere warm, somewhere bright. It is so strange what a difference that little line, that brushstroke makes, the Antarctic Convergence, that mysterious boundary between the southernmost continent and the rest of the world. So once again we have emerged, returned, blinking and shaking our heads as we explored the Falklands for two days at the end of southern summer. While the diving was warmer and there was kelp forest to explore, still some things never change. I was filming a hermit crab; it was fussy and comic, unsure whether to hide or attack, when suddenly there was frantic motion on the edge of the scene, yellow and fast, yet all herky-jerky. Yes madam, that’s how it’s done when you’re a scallop, but it is a bit of a fright when you are not expecting it! Once you get used to the swimming, it opens and closes its shells very rapidly like those teeth you can buy at a joke shop. And once you get used to that, you can see the dozens of baby blue eyes, an eye for each tentacle along the lip of the shell. I see them on both sides of the line, the same, but so much different, as is true for everything I see in the world: the same, but so much different, it just depends where I am and today I am somewhere beautiful, somewhere between the Falklands and the continent of South America, blinking and shaking my head with a small, secret smile and a promise to myself to always do it again.
Oh my…it is sunny, there is no wind, and the sea is almost flat. We could be on an inland waterway, somewhere warm, somewhere bright. It is so strange what a difference that little line, that brushstroke makes, the Antarctic Convergence, that mysterious boundary between the southernmost continent and the rest of the world. So once again we have emerged, returned, blinking and shaking our heads as we explored the Falklands for two days at the end of southern summer. While the diving was warmer and there was kelp forest to explore, still some things never change. I was filming a hermit crab; it was fussy and comic, unsure whether to hide or attack, when suddenly there was frantic motion on the edge of the scene, yellow and fast, yet all herky-jerky. Yes madam, that’s how it’s done when you’re a scallop, but it is a bit of a fright when you are not expecting it! Once you get used to the swimming, it opens and closes its shells very rapidly like those teeth you can buy at a joke shop. And once you get used to that, you can see the dozens of baby blue eyes, an eye for each tentacle along the lip of the shell. I see them on both sides of the line, the same, but so much different, as is true for everything I see in the world: the same, but so much different, it just depends where I am and today I am somewhere beautiful, somewhere between the Falklands and the continent of South America, blinking and shaking my head with a small, secret smile and a promise to myself to always do it again.
