So where've you been? 3 Kadavu, Fiji Islands

PHOBIAS ASSOCIATED WITH
THE SEA

• Hydrophobia - a fear of water

• Ichthyophobia - a fear of fish (or,
more specifically, the fear of sharks,
elasmophobia)

• Nyctophobia - a fear of darkness

• Claustrophobia - a fear of being
enclosed or enveloped

• Barophobia - a fear of being
crushed

• Pnigophobia - a fear of being
unable to breathe, or of choking

• Phagophobia - a fear of being
eaten alive

• Bathophobia - a fear of depth or
sinking

• Thanatophobia - a fear of dying

In sum: Thalassophobia - an
irrational terror of the sea.

The first time I swam with a shark its presence, and its obvious interest, horrified me.

Arriving in Kadavu, events, situations, people conspired; I needed to complete my diving course fast. It was time to kill my phobia of deep water stone dead.
The Great Astrolabe Reef, world class dive site, home to sharks, barracuda, manta rays, turtles, would be where I spent the rest of my time in Fiji.

The first night, listening to a tall tale about a shark ripping a man's stomach out, I introduced my fear to its public by explosively vomiting everywhere.

The first day at sea, I suited up, oriented myself, rolled backward headfirst into the ocean chop. And felt my throat tighten in horror. I looked down to reassure myself - beneath my tiny suspended legs helplessly lifted by the swells, was space. Lots and lots of space. A galaxy of pressurised current filled nothing.
My throat closed entirely. Looking up into sky and spray or down into the greened void was the same. I couldn't do this.

The thrashing and the panic wasn't pretty. Me insisting we abandon the dive wasn't pretty. Me hiding at the bottom of the boat, trying not to see any more sea at all wasn't glorious or brave. I still had to swim back from the harbour. Crying salt solution into an ocean of more salt, more solution than anything I'd ever contribute was neither adventurous nor exciting.
My fear was located entirely at the surface - once in the depths, the belly of the ocean, I had no nervousness, no panic, my dive skills were good. I was a strong swimmer. I knew my stuff.
Theat day's walk back to land and to the ignoble routine of dismantling equipment I'd been too terrified to use was a taste of pure defeat.

The instructor levelled with me. "I could tell you that it's going to be okay, but it's not. This fear of the surface thing is something you're going to have to deal with. You'll never be okay if you don't get past it."
The whole journey so far has been a process of learning to deal with fear. I have a number of ways of evading the immobilising rise of panic before it climbs from diaphragm to gut to throat, now. I had to fix myself, know myself, use them all.

I went back out the next morning, and did that fucking dive. And the next. And the next.

Qualified. Then did sixteen more bloody dives. In all conditions. On my twelfth shark, I reached across and playfully tweaked his tail.

Hit that fucker of a phobia. Smacked through the barrier. Nailed it. Right on the head.