Mike Dixon

Then everything changed.
Tim took him to the drop-off
and he descended into a dif-
ferent world. The corals were
far more impressive now.
They branched out from the
vertical face and poked up
on ledges. On the terraces
below, giant clams nestled
between huge brain corals. David saw them close their
shells as his shadow passed over the light-sensitive spots
on their flesh. He was now at fifty feet. That was deeper
than he intended to go but the temptation to descend fur-
ther was hard to resist.
He tilted the sled and went down to seventy. At that
depth his bottom time would be much shorter. David didn‟t
care. He was determined to see some of the delicate corals
that lived in the still waters of the deep. A patch of staghorn
caught his eye.
There was a picture of the magnificently branched coral
on the dive shop wall. David had enthused to customers
about it, pretending that he was a regular visitor to the
Great Barrier Reef. Now he wanted to see it for real. He
swooped down and found that the polyps were out. The tiny
coral animals were in their feeding mode – brilliant blue
against the white coral sand.
He would have stayed longer but had no choice. Tim was
keeping up a steady pace in the inflatable and the sled was
bound to follow. He left the staghorn and was soon chasing
a manta ray. It fled before him and entered a chasm. Sud-
denly the towrope went slack. David surfaced and heard
Tim‟s voice.
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