WOW DIVERS

For me, Seogwipo Port is less a place I visit as a tourist and more a place I leave from.

The gear gets loaded, the boat pulls away, and little by little the city falls behind.

My memory of diving in Seogwipo begins here.

I was nervous before I even entered the water.

So the explanations, the equipment checks and the feeling that someone was paying attention to how I was doing mattered more than I expected.

I never felt that I was being rushed into the water. It felt more like I could move forward at a pace I could handle.

That was when I first thought, ‘Maybe I can do this.’

Once the gear was ready and the boat left the harbor, the feeling changed.

Looking at diving equipment on land and sitting on a boat waiting to enter the water were not the same thing.

I was still nervous, but by then I also wanted to know what was underneath us.

Going underwater did not suddenly make me love the sea.

Breathing through a regulator, moving with the equipment and looking around underwater were all unfamiliar.

But as I slowly adjusted, the fear stopped taking up all of my attention.

For the first time, I had enough room to look around, and the Jeju sea I thought I knew began to feel different.

What I remember most is not the depth. It is what I saw beneath the water around Munseom.

Fish moved between the rocks, with soft coral and an underwater landscape I had never seen from land.

Until then, most of the sea I knew ended at the surface.

That dive changed that.

Finishing the dive did not make my fear of seawater disappear.

What stayed with me was the fact that I had been underwater, looking at the marine life around Munseom, without being overwhelmed by fear.

For me, it was less a conclusion that I now loved the sea and more the discovery of another way to see it.