Everything Is Blue

Everything is Blue

I went diving with a friend recently who was a little disappointed that the underwater world didn’t look as bright and colorful as Finding Nemo or the National Geographic Channel. It turns out there’s a really good reason for that. But first, story time:

I was SCUBA diving off the back side of the Molokini crater and we went down to a hundred and thirty feet because, as a recreational diver, you’re not supposed to go below a hundred and thirty feet. It was a hundred and thirty-one. Yeah you can’t go any further than a hundred and thirty feet because it’s just not safe. Supposedly. What can I say? I’m just a rebel. A twelve inch rebel.

If you go deep like that you can suffer – or, in this case, enjoy – a condition known as nitrogen narcosis. It’s when you have too much nitrogen in your blood and it starts messing with your nerves and you start to feel all loopy. WOOOOOH!

They say it’s a personality amplifier kind of like being intoxicated and I was a little nervous being down at a hundred and thirty feet because it was only my fourth dive ever. Yeah, my dive instructor believes in learning by doing and pushing everything to the maximum recreational limit. Hey, it’s the limit. You might as well hit it.

Anyway, there I am down deep, totally narc’d and I’m looking around myself thinking “Everything is blue!” Up here it seems pretty obvious. Down there it was like poetry. [French accent:] Monsieur Cousteau says “It is the rapture of the deep, ha ha ha ha ha”

But there’s a kind of truth to the realization that everything is blue. Even in water with great visibility at thirty feet or a hundred and thirty feet everything is blue. Or at least bluer than it is up here.

It really shouldn’t be too surprising. The water decreases the amount of light and the colors that make it down to the stuff that you’re looking at. Red’s the longest wavelength and it goes first, followed by oranges and then yellows.

So if you want to see all those bright beautiful colors when you dive, you may need to bring a light source with you. Even in the day time. A dive light could even be useful when you’re snorkeling if you’re snorkeling down deep to see pretty colors.

Now check out these two pictures of the same lobster. No light, not colorful. Well-lit, very colorful.

So the next time you go diving, day or night, rent a dive light and take it with you so you can see all the beautiful colors of all the beautiful sea creatures. Otherwise you’ll just be sitting down there thinking “He was right. Everything is blue.”

And newbie uncertified divers who go below a hundred and thirty feet? They implode. Patty told me I had to say that.

Transcribed by: Chryss H.

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