The next dive took place mostly in the shallows as we stalked through the kelp, hoping to catch sight of some seals. I browsed the weeds, brushing them aside with my fingers to see what might be hiding there. I disturbed a spider crab. It had been perfectly camouflaged by straggly fronds of seaweed attached to its back. As it scampered away its shell resembled a Second World War-era Brodie helmet disguised with a net and green tassels, except in this case the disguise was itself alive. The crab was hidden not by masquerading as something else, but by letting itself be a home to other things; by embracing other life, it was protected. Likewise, the school protects members of a single species by diminishing the chance that any one individual will be seized. Schooling – the coordination of motion, trajectory and speed – provides each fish with the eyes of its fellows and might also help with hydrodynamic efficiency. The crab smothered in other forms of life represents a kind of schooling across the borders of species. The ribbons of seaweed, the grasping hydroids or anemones stuck to its shell, wafting in different directions, give an overall impression that this cannot be a single life form on the move. It looks like an environment, a little world.
This area was known as Gun Rock: apparently there were cannons from an old shipwreck nestled among the kelp in the flat areas. Theoretically I should have been more interested in finding these human relics than the seals, but my heart had other ideas. To our right were large horizontal ledges of stone. A slight current helped us drift past them. I shone my torch under one and the electric- blue trickles of pigment on a squat lobster lit up in the beam. I rose up parallel with a ledge. Then I took a double take: lying atop the ledge sideways, eyes closed and seemingly asleep, was an enormous seal. A male, judging by its size. The current was rocking it slightly and the kelp fronds dangling down near it looked like the ragged curtains of an undersea bedchamber. I was astonished and a little afraid. It was less than six feet away and much larger than me, a chubby bulb of life dozing in the water. And it was a mammal. In an instant the old ideas of mermaids and selkies stopped seeming ridiculous. There was something in the seal that was still of the land: cow-like, dog-like, human-like; something breathing and warm, whiskered, wearing skin, not scales. Then I understood there was another reason why I was moved to be so close to it: as the seal slumbered it held its front flippers crossed on its chest. My dad used to sleep like that. Of all the things I guessed I might experience diving, I never thought I’d meet something with body language that reminded me, in such a precise way, of my father. That an animal of the sea could be, even if in a limited way, a dead ringer for a human. For a parent. For family.
It opened its eyes. The huge dark marbles blinked a few times then looked at me with a benign curiosity. As it angled its head to get a better look, folds appeared in the flesh below its muzzle: ‘chins’ of fat, as a human or puppy might have. How absurd it was to not regard this creature as a person, kindred. Its personhood was encased in a shape adapted to its environment, but why should that lead us to conclude it wasn’t a person? Wide awake now, the seal wiggled off the rock and disappeared around the corner.
Back aboard the boat, I offered bars of chocolate around. I had a few takers, hungry for calories after an hour in the cold sea. I slumped against the gunwale and let my hair down: it was all over the place, salty and dank as seaweed.
‘Someone’s had a good dive!’ said Angela.
I nodded. Angela smiled. One more student of hers had come to understand.
Another diver, an underwater photographer wearing a rebreather, came aboard. He looked like he’d won the lottery. He had.
‘Nine! There were bloody nine of them! All around us. Un-bloody-believable. My God! Seals!’
‘Happy, then, are we?’ asked the first mate.
‘Happy? That was crazy. They were so close. Not one. Bloody nine!’
The deck was awash with contentment. Until recently I hadn’t even known people dived to see wildlife in UK waters. It was something they did in Bali, Thailand or on the Great Barrier Reef: the famous scuba and snorkelling sites where life thrummed in abundance. But in this moment you couldn’t have convinced any of us to swap places with divers anywhere else in the world. We had just swum with seals. We had shared their water as we witnessed the liquid perfection of their style, ribboning around us, tassels of life, the silver dogs of the ocean.
And I was happy for another reason. In fixing the weight issue, getting down easier, it felt like I had added some gravitas to myself. You had a problem at sea and you solved it by adding more weight. You didn’t solve it by getting out. You solved it by going down heavier.
I didn’t know whose voice this was – Rán’s, Dad’s, an amalgamated voice of my diving tutors, or my own. Perhaps all of these voices were blending, mixing into what, for me, was the voice of the water.