Jacqueline Cousteau

Trying to maneuver in zero gravity is trickier than I imagined, no matter the nudging of the currents of the ocean. After a few painful hours of videos created by the same filmmakers who provided the world with sex-ed and drivers training movies, we were trusted to bob about in the two meter deep pool at our dive resort on the island of Koh Tao, where more people are SSI and PADI certified than anywhere else in the world.. We don out heavy turtle shells and wobble into the deep end. The most unnerving moment for me is the moment your face drops below the surface. Although you've got your Darth Vadar device in place, the simple concept of breathing down there seems silly, wrong eve. So I prepare myself for the thirty minutes with a feeble deep breath and wet the crown of my head. In the water, the breathing kicks up again, but I have to relearn how to do something that I never really had to learn in the first place. First I try to inhale and exhale through my nose, which causes the mask to suck up against my face then pooch out, allowing water to seep in. Once that is down pat, its on to the difficult task of trying to maintain neutral buoyancy. The goal is the be able to sit yogi like, legs crossed, underwater, rising and falling a few inches from the sand in sync with your calm breath. Yeah, well, calm is the key word here, isn't it? My ragged breath during our first dive in the ocean (with all those fish and coral and currents and stuff) causes me to yo-yo around the reef, my wonderful instructor Neil gazing up at me helplessly, urging me to breath smoothly. A rudimentary grasp on buoyancy gives way to glee that I am weightless, and I proceed with the common "its my first time underwater" acrobatics, one armed handstands, aerial spins and the like. With increased movement comes rapid breathing, which, at one slightly terrifying moment, causes my regulator( the mouth piece that is attached to my oxygen mask) to dislodge ever so slightly from my lips. In a mater of seconds, I forget how to clear my mouth of the sea water that has leaked in, and panicking from a lack of air, I open my mouth even further. At this moment, we are 18 meters or 30 feet underwater, so going up is not a particularly inviting option, considering the possibility of decompression sickness, like the bends. I manage to swim downwards to the instructors assistant, whose fin I tug on urgently. We stare at each other until Neil pushes over and reminds me of the basics. The regulator clears my mouth of water, I begin to breathe again (very quickly, but breathing nonetheless) and Neil takes my hand for a short swim around the purple corals, the lull of the fishy movements dropping my heart rate. Still alive and kickin' folks, alive and kickin'.