Scuba Sisters

By The Marine Detective on July 23, 2022

Here’s to the salty sisterhood of cold-water divers (and the men with whom we submerge). I am a week late with posting this for “Women’s Dive Day”. Yes, it’s been busy.

But, it’s still really important to me to put these photos into the world and reflect on how much this sisterhood means to me, and why. I have tears in my eyes as I type this, so apparently, the feelings run deep.

Why? Because you may have noticed that, by some, there is an increasing downward pressure on womxn in an attempt to limit the spaces in which we expand and the choices we WILL make. Because some want to hold on to the assumption of inherent privilege based on the absurd “criteria” of skin pigmentation; whether one’s chromosomes have one X or two; or gender identification. Because some fight equality to claim superiority.

I now have some pretty good expletives in my head which I will not type here.

Of many examples of times it has become very clear to me that being a womxn* in science and scuba is important, let me share the following:

On a really hot day, I was “show and tell” for two children in our community. I dressed up in all my dive gear (the full weight and heat of it) and walked down the hallway and into the classroom with Cayden’s little hand in mine on one side, and Sophia’s little hand in mine on the other.

I walked in as a surprise to the other students. I then was gifted the time to talk about the science of the dive gear and the life that lived in the cold Ocean; our neighbours who were just below the surface of where we lived.

I took the equipment off piece by piece after explaining what it did. The children chose to try to lift the weights and cylinder and we discussed pressure and buoyancy (always good metaphors ).

In the course of this, among so many moments the filled my heart, a little boy looked up at me. He had such an open expression on his face and he said . . . “You’re my first scuba diver”.

I was his first scuba diver – me an older woman, speaking for science and the sea, engaging not in an elevated way but in a way that invited them all to follow where their loves took them, and yes, I was wearing a bright green tutu.

How does this help shape the future? We will never know will we? We are all projecting our energies and images into places where we might increase what is good in the world, or suppress it.

From the depths, love to you my scuba sisters, and to the men we swim beside. Respect and gratitude to all who shine their light so that others may follow; who do NOT push others down in an attempt to feel elevated. That’s such a tragic and transparent indicator of being a hollow human.

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Below: A slideshow to honour some scuba sisters.

For those that may not have seen the use of “womxn” before. The spelling of womxn is a feminist choice in two ways. It removes the “m-a-n” from “woman” and “m-e-n” from “women”. It’s also an acknowledgement that I am including trans and non-binary humans when I use the word.