Snorkelling is the most accessible water activity aboard the Naora voyage and it is underestimated by the people who have not done it in the right place. The wrong place is the turbid coastal water where the visibility is insufficient to see the reef at two metres depth and where the marine life is the marine life that the turbidity supports, which is not the marine life that made anyone travel to the Coral Triangle.
The right place is the offshore anchorage of the Indonesian archipelago where the water clarity that the Coral Triangle’s oceanic conditions produce makes the reef at two metres visible from the surface and the reef at eight metres visible with a free descent. The snorkelling in the right place from the right boat is the snorkelling in conditions that the shore-based snorkel tour cannot provide because the shore-based snorkel tour is constrained by the proximity to the shore, which is the proximity to the turbidity that the shore produces.
The snorkel equipment on the Eighty2 is the full-face mask option and the traditional mask-and-snorkel option for the member who prefers it, in the sizes that the mixed crew of the Naora voyage requires, clean and maintained and on the hook beside the dive platform. The member who wants to snorkel puts on the mask and enters from the platform. There is no form to fill, no wristband to collect, no group to wait for. There is the platform and the mask and the water and the reef.
What the Surface Shows
The surface of the Coral Triangle anchorage shows more marine life than most recreational dive sites in the world show at fifteen metres depth. The coral density of the Coral Triangle is the highest on the planet and it begins at the surface: the coral heads that break the surface at low water in the shallower sections of the anchorage, the coral gardens at two metres depth that the clear water makes fully visible from the surface, the fish schools that the coral supports in the density that the specific biodiversity of the Coral Triangle produces. The Napoleon wrasse at three metres.
The sea turtles that the cleaning stations bring to the shallow reef. The reef sharks that the Banda Sea sites produce in the early morning, visible from the surface as the shadows moving along the reef edge that the snorkeller knows is the shark and that the person who has been told about the sharks beforehand watches with the specific combination of the alert attention and the non-panic that I explain is the correct response before anyone enters the water.
The sharks are not interested in the snorkeller. The snorkeller’s alertness keeps it that way.
