Dear Critters,

Call me crazy, but last month I literally spent 8 days under water in Sabang Beach, Puerto Galera in the Philippines. I did 3-5 dives each day (31 in total), and despite the valet diving at Atlantis Dive Resort, there were times when I totally crashed face down unexpectedly amidst the typical sleep-eat-dive-dive-eat-dive-dive-dive-eat-sleep cycle. Sometimes my body has trouble keeping pace with my spirit but to be honest that has never stopped me from trying :-)

It was so exciting to return to the Philippines after my solo expedition two years ago, this time with my darling Abe and our dearest dive buddies LP and Julie Bear for company.

And as always on holidays, my heart goes out to any strangers I see taking photos of each other against some exotic backdrop, rather than having their photo taken together. Everywhere I go, I see people in this situation and I quickly volunteer to take their photo for them. Usually, the strangers disappear from my life as quickly as they came, with only the photo on their camera as proof that our paths ever crossed.

However on this trip, the couple I randomly offered to photograph proved to be the delightful Susan (above in purple) and Richard (in blue) who quickly expanded our little dive group of four to six. Here’s the picture I took of them on their camera to introduce myself:

 How wonderful to make new friends on holidays, and how proud I was of Susan for doing her Advanced Open Water course and to Julie Bear, LP, Richard and Susan for all completing their Nitrox course. Here we all are in the picture at the top celebrating their achievements, along with Dive Master Norm (in the red shirt) and videographer Rob (standing beside me in the back row) who took some amazing professional video of our dives for us!

I love travelling and diving. I adore the feeling of gliding through the salt water to encounter all the amazing creatures that inhabit the ocean. I love the feeling that each minute under water is healing my body and nourishing my soul. But there is something absolutely priceless about the social aspect of meeting new people who share the same passion. Long after the salt water has dried from your skin, the friends you have made leave a smile on your face, along with the hope that one day you might meet again to share another underwater adventure :-)

Love and Bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

Today, I wore the pearls I bought on my dive trip to the Philippines  last month as a Mother’s Day gift for my step-mother. (It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t bear to part with them, but I discovered that she already has an expensive set, and I figured that receiving these as a gift from me would have been a huge step down from the strand she already has …)

The street vendor had been insistent and, to be honest, I wasn’t especially keen. But my disinterest only fuelled his determination and somehow as he shadowed me along the narrow, cobbled streets of Puerto Galera, we managed to agree on a price. Besides, the necklace, bracelet and earring set was pink, and like me, pearls have a strong affinity with the ocean, making the purchase from the desperate street-seller all the more difficult to refuse.

So today after managing to pull myself out of bed at 10am, I donned my new set of pearls for the first time. Lately I have found mornings to be more difficult than I would have liked. Until recently, I have been travelling fairly well with my health, refusing radiation and chemotherapy and relying on organic food, carrot juice and as much diving as my body can handle to get my health back on track.  I have also reduced stress in my life by arranging with my employer to work part-time.

Like scuba diving, work has always been a passion for me, but after being diagnosed with cancer – again – last year, I have needed to make regaining and sustaining my health a top priority. After many months away last year, returning to work has felt like a slow restoration of my soul. Some days I would love nothing more than to return to work full-time; other days, I struggle and wonder whether I have truly taken on too much too soon.

This morning I felt very unwell, but that string of pearls around my neck somehow made me feel ready to face the world. And all day my colleagues went out of their way to comment on how well I looked! They usually do when I wear pink, which to be honest is more often than not. Cancer is a strange illness. Most days, if I didn’t tell anyone, I’m sure those whose paths I cross would never know what my journey has been and continues to be. But a tumour grows slowly inside the body, hidden like a pearl still growing inside its shell.

That may seem a strange comparison – comparing a tumour to a pearl. But in reality, I have learned some valuable lessons from my illness over the past four years that I could never have learned any other way. There has been much suffering, but pearls are the result of irritation and gold is refined by fire. I firmly believe that the changes I have made in my life can help me to reclaim my health, and that every day will yield its pearl of wisdom to those who are willing to learn from it rather than succumb.

So today I dragged myself from my bed and fastened a cheap string of pink pearls around my neck, ready to face whatever the day would bring. I am learning to take one day at a time. And I am slowly coming to understand that each day is a pearl that I must wear with love and gratitude, whatever challenges may come. To me, every pearl is a blessing that I must remember to count.

Love and bubbles,
PT xxx

Dear Critters,

My name is PT and I am a Diveaholic. It has been 24 days since my last dive in the warm waters of the Philippines. This morning I finally had the long-awaited chance to re-enter the cold but very familiar waters of Melbourne, Australia. Most weekends when conditions permit, my buddies and I dive one of five piers – Blairgowrie, Rye, Mornington, Portsea or Flinders. When rumour circulated that a 4ft draughtboard shark had been spotted yesterday at Flinders, the decision was a very easy one. While sharks are rarely seen at our local dive sites, I absolutely adore them.

Whenever I approach any critter underwater, I usually ask it if it is ready for its closeup. Weedy sea dragons are endemic to Flinders and, despite divers coming from all over the world to photograph them, many are camera shy. Some are a little more curious and are quite happy to let you take a few photos. But within seconds I knew that the dragon suspended in the water column before me was different. Instead of asking if it was ready for its closeup, I asked if it would like to dance, and we danced forever until my best buddy LP signalled that he knew exactly where to find the elusive draughtboard shark.

When you are a marine animal, anything that shows interest in you is usually a predator, so when something larger than yourself approaches, you are probably going to swim away as fast as your fins can carry you. It takes a lot of love and time to convince a critter that you pose no threat, and if you are patient enough to help it understand this fact, it may begin to see you as an ally.

At first, the small shark wondered if I could truly see its mottled form camouflaged in the thick bed of weeds. And though it seemed ready for its close up, alas it was not ready to dance and, not quite knowing whether I was truly friend or foe, it followed instinct and swam away. Moments later, a large piece of fish flesh on the end of a shiny hook fell close to the spot where the shark had been resting, and I was grateful that it had not stayed near to take the deadly bait. Sadly, its instincts were almost correct – humans are indeed the world’s most deadly predators.

This is the world that I choose to inhabit in my wandering thoughts awake and in the stirring dreams of sleep. It is filled with dancing dragons and gentle sharks that are sweeter than candy, kept eternally safe from human harm. Sometimes we do little more than glance, and sometimes we forget the world and dance. I hope you enjoy this video!

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

Ok – so it wasn’t actually a shark …(but if you are here to see sharks, please watch some of my other sharkey encounters with Great Whites and Tiger Sharks through to draughtboard sharks and everything in between on under the ‘Video’ tab on this blog! Crazy cool!)

I was almost too busy in the fullness of life to remember that today is the first anniversary of my second major surgery to remove a large tumour from my abdomen. Two years earlier, although I was officially ‘too young’ to be diagnosed with endometrial cancer, I’d been given a radical hysterectomy in the hopes that this might help me to reclaim my health. Yet here I was again, my world utterly disrupted, waiting in a flimsy white gown and cap on a cold hospital gurney, ready for more life changing surgery. With recurrent Stage 3C cancer, the prognosis is even more dire and for this surgery, the stakes were higher.

365 days can turn the deepest trauma into a merciful blur. So today I trawled through all I had written to help myself process everything before, during, and in the aftermath of that nightmarish three weeks in hospital, seeking to connect the ethereal dots between where I had been and how far I had come. Through the time-worn echoes of my own words, I relived my conflicted decision to reject chemotherapy and radiation, the intense physical post-surgery pain, and the indignity of being showered by nurses because I could do absolutely nothing for myself. I braced myself through the memory of emergency surgery six days later after my bowel ruptured violently in the night. I woke from anaesthetic to find a loathsome ileostomy, too close to forty-eight staples along my mid-line abdominal wound for any healing to occur. Nothing in my life has ever traumatised me more. A large incisional hernia remains to this day.

Intensive Care and High Dependency Units. Twenty-two days in a private hospital that my insurance wouldn’t cover – $20,000 out of pocket. Catheters and drain tubes. Blood transfusions. Six weeks unable to eat; being fed through a pick-line in an artery in my shoulder. Attached around the clock to negative pressure machines that never helped my wounds to heal. Multiple blood clots in both lungs; weeks of Clexane injections; months of the nightmare drug Warfarin.  Surgical menopause. Hypotension. Over 160 days across four hospitals, either admitted, in Emergency for chronic adhesion pain or attending for intensive wound management almost every day for five months. Five general anaesthetics and three major surgeries in less than eight months. In one 25 hour period, I was admitted five times across three hospitals.

Still swirling in the blur: clinics and pathology centres. X-Rays, CTs, PET scans, GFRs, MRIs, INRs, colonoscopies, gastroscopies, diagnostic enemas, cardiograms, chemo education sessions, radiotherapy tattooing and planning meetings, endless meetings with GPs, surgeons, haematologists, oncologists, wound specialists, physiotherapists, stomal nurses, chaplains, psychologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, hospital administrators … (have I left anyone or anything out???)

And yet here I sit one year on – reflecting, writing, living. And though I am eternally grateful that my wounds have finally healed and that the dreaded ileostomy was reversed five months ago, I am not yet cancer-free. At last diagnosis, I still had one inoperable lymph node tumour, and according to my oncologist, my prognosis without the treatment I ultimately refused is bleak. But today I am celebrating a significantly greater quality of life than I could possibly have imagined a year ago today. I take full responsibility for my health and I work hard at getting myself well. I am able to work part-time and I dive as often as I can, believing with all my heart that a steady course of nutrition, ocean therapy and laughter can help me to regain and sustain my health.

Yet despite what any kind strangers may tell me, I am neither strong nor inspirational. Every ounce of strength I have, I have drawn from my faith in God and from those in my life who cared enough to step up and be there for me. My beautiful family and friends were an incredible support network for me, and without them I would surely now be dust, scattered and swept away beneath some local pier. Instead, they got me back on my feet and back into my beloved ocean which they knew would help me to heal. Even though I was still in significant pain, they even got me snow skiing for the first (and last!) time in my life not long after leaving hospital, still attached to a negative pressure machine under that big jacket:

The battle is truly won or lost in the mind, and these are the Earth Angels who helped to keep me sane. My darling Abe, my father Kirby, my buddy LP and my chaplain Peter – these were my four pillars of wisdom, encouragement and strength as I navigated the most difficult times of my life. My precious family and friends: Stacey, Linda, Nancy, Nathan, Mary, Joe, Stephen, Kevin, Mini, Bonnie, Bec, J-Lo, Julie, Kay-Ta, Pat, Leigh, Nicole, Bonnie, Susie, Jill, Sharon, Annie and David! The way these precious souls gathered around me on my long, slow journey to recovery can never be fully explained or repaid. And while I have been through much and still face a long journey ahead, there are others who face even greater challenges than mine and my heart goes out fully on their journeys. I hope that I can find some way to be a source of strength and encouragement to them.

One year on and soon to celebrate my 250th dive, I give thanks for every breath and every moment, every ray of sun that kisses my cheek and every salty drop of ocean that baptises me into my new life of hard-earned wisdom and gratitude. And while time may help the trauma to fade, those scars are there to remind me of all that I have endured and survived. May I never forget those who have given me the kindness, mercy and strength to face the many challenges along the continuing journey. To them, I credit the year that has passed and dedicate the years to come. Put simply, joy abounds.

Today, my heart nearly bursts with all the love and bubbles,
PT xxx

ps Just to be totally clear … I have dived with many types of shark, including great whites, bull sharks, tiger sharks, lemon sharks, nurse sharks, grey nurse sharks, leopard sharks, wobbegongs, swell sharks, reef sharks and more, but I have NEVER been attacked by one. To me, sharks are beautiful, and I would dive with them every day of my life if I had the chance … but hey, I still think it would be hilarious if I went out and bought a pair of those crazy new ‘shark bite’ bathers  :-P

Dear Critters,

For me, every dive is a milestone. One year ago today, I was in hospital during an agonising three week stint; I had just been moved from the Intensive Care Unit after two major surgeries in less than a week. I was connected to morphine, drips and all manner of drains, and I refused to even look at the two dozen staples down my abdominal mid-line and the infected, gaping wounds between them. (Actually, I didn’t muster the courage to sneak a peak until a month after I got home … those wounds took over five months to heal…)

Yesterday, I celebrated Dive 250 – on the first day of winter! Usually the carpark of Blairgowrie Pier is crowded with divers, but my best buddy LP and I had the pier all to ourselves – and with good reason … the water was 14 degrees celcius (57 Farenheit)! When I confess that I don’t yet own a drysuit, you will understand that this was a pain entirely self-inflicted.

To be honest, the visibility wasn’t great and there wasn’t a lot to see: a few small fish, a couple of nudibranchs and a very small stingray right at the end of the dive. Even so, a cold dive for 70 mins will always be more fun than five minutes on land (or three excruciating weeks in hospital!)

After being thoroughly dive-deprived for the last two weekends, even a dive without any spectacular photos or video feels like heaven on earth to me. Every breath – whether on land or underwater – is definitely a gift to be celebrated!

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

Did you ever get the feeling that you weren’t quite where you were meant to be?

A lot of people like to go to the beach, but to me it just seems totally unnatural to sit on sand!

I need to be in the water, under that pier.

Come on, Pink Tank – let’s go diving!

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

Today I dived with my best buddy LP for our final chance to say goodbye to all of the lovely crabs that had survived the annual migration to Rye Pier; they are now headed back out to deeper parts of the bay where they will hibernate under the sand for up to 8 months.

It was also my first ever experience of diving in a drysuit which I borrowed from the lovely Julie Bear. I stayed nice and dry until right towards the end of the 90 minute dive, when I felt water seeping right through and saturating me down to the core! Still, I am inspired to keep experimenting with drysuits now that winter has arrived (11 degrees Celcius is brrrrrrrr!), and I will trial two more models next weekend (in a drysuit, the water doesn’t seep through onto your skin … unless you are me today :-P)

Although I still have video from yesterday and today’s dive to edit and share with you, here are my final photos from this year’s migration. I hope you enjoy them. I know a lot of people might think I’m a bit crazy for getting so up-close-and-personal with these critters, but they are gentle little souls who would never hurt a human. I wish them much love and luck on their journey. Maybe we will get to see them again next year :-)

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

ps Big tanks to LP for kindly taking the photos that I am in!

Dear Critters,

Have you ever been to a spider crab disco? It’s both exciting and hilarious!  Thousands of eager crabs line up in anticipation outside the disco door, with bouncers to make sure everyone stays civilised. When the door opens, the impatient crowd climb over each other to get in, ready for some insane dance floor action. Sure there are a few wallflowers quietly watching on, but most of these crazy crabs are here to get their groove on, and some even glam up for the occasion!

When the beat drops, the spider crabs bust out their coolest moves in every style you can imagine. Moshing, line dancing, break dancing, moon walking, crowd surfing, tragic 80s moves … I even saw one doing the Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ dance! Some have loads of style, strutting their stuff til they trip over their own feet, taking others down with them!

At one point, a large yellow seahorse impressed the crowd with an elegant solo waltz, and a banjo shark owned the dance floor, gliding through the crabby crowd. Honestly, they were all having such a great time, I just couldn’t help myself – I had to pass my camera to my buddy LP so I could join in for a little underwater, tongue-poking boogie of my own.

In the end, the dancing crabs partied for endless hours under a gorgeous sea jelly disco ball. I hope you enjoy this fun video of the recent spider crab disco at Rye Pier during the annual migration of 2014 as much as I enjoyed making it!

Love and bubbles,
PT xxx

ps my friend paparazzibob told me he went to a spider crab disco once – he was having an awesome time, but then he pulled a mussel! Hilarious! :-P

Dear Critters,

Dive 255 was honestly the most magical dive of my life! Though we hadn’t made plans to dive today, my buddy LP contacted me early this morning with an offer I just couldn’t refuse; within the hour we were making our way to Flinders Pier for a crisp winter’s dive.

Only moments after we entered the water in the sparkling winter sun, we spotted the most incredible sea jelly (one of my absolute favourite critters in the ocean!); I could happily have spent an hour filming the delicate creature as its soft body strobed with dazzling electric lights (I can’t wait to share the footage I took with you in my next post!) Cross my heart, I have never seen one as amazing as this before!

When LP beckoned me away from the jelly, I knew something incredible must be waiting for us at the far end of the pier. I was so excited when we passed a beautiful eagle ray, but the best was yet to come …

Imagine diving past thousands of fairy lights, but those lights are actually enormous shoals of tiny silver fish, swimming slowly between the tall, sponge-encrusted pylons. You move slowly towards them, longing to join their fancy formations.(I just love this picture LP took of me today!)

And when they know that you mean them no harm, they accept you into their school, and every fibre of your being fuses with theirs. Now you are truly one of them as you have always dreamed of becoming.

Please enjoy this short film of my buddy and I swimming with the most blissful schools of fishes I have ever experienced at a Melbourne pier.

Do you have a happy place you can go to in your mind anytime you feel that you need to escape your life? One perfectly blissful memory with the power to sustain you through life’s most difficult moments? Today, LP and I were able to capture that memory on film, and I am so thrilled to be able to share it with you, my dear friends – enjoy!

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

People often ask me if I believe in UFOs – Underwater Fabulous Objects? Of course I do! In fact, I managed to capture video footage of an extraordinary UFO on my very last dive!

When my buddy LP pointed out this incredible sea jelly, dancing and flashing its bright lights for my camera, I was absolutely transfixed. Words can’t describe what I saw, and I’m sad to say even my video doesn’t really do it any sort of justice (but I simply had to share this with you anyway :-) )

Still, here is my bonafide UFO video (and a picture of LP photographing it). The ocean is full of blissful mysteries, and this exquisite creature is definitely one of the most mysterious to me. I really hope you like it!

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

I’m pretty sure no-one has ever done any research in this area, but in my game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’, scuba beats cancer :-) Every dive I do makes me feel more alive. When people receive a cancer diagnosis, tragically they usually think of it as some kind of death sentence, but for me it was an awful wake up call. After lots of research, I realised there were many things that I could do to try to regain and sustain my health (and maybe NOT doing some of those things had caused me to become sick in the first place).

When some awful old guy in a white coat tells you that you have two years to live, he’s assuming that every person with your condition is exactly the same, with the same grim mindset and the same passive approach to wellness.Well guess what? That’s just not me.

While I respect anyone else’s choices about how to manage their own health, poisoning my body with deadly chemotherapy toxins, destroying my immune system and killing parts of my body with radiation just didn’t make sense to me as a way to make my body well.After two very near misses with chemotherapy and radiation, I rejected them both and decided to fight my recurrent cancer as naturally as possible. I truly believe that the battle is won or lost in the mind, so the way we respond to diagnosis and the action we are willing to take to rise above it can be the difference between living a happy life and lying down to die.

I didn’t really make any major lifestyle changes after my first cancer diagnosis, so when a bunch of tumours returned less than three years after my first major surgery, I decided it was Game On and time to change some pretty big areas of my life permanently. My personal tumour fighting routine consists of:

* surrounding myself with amazing, positive, encouraging family and friends who believe in me and help me to navigate the tough stuff
* a daily protocol of quark (European cream cheese) mixed with flaxseed oil, crushed flaxseeds, with frozen banana and organic berries, almonds, cocao powder and chia seeds every day for breakfast
* an organic, rainbow salad for lunch every day with a tumour-busting salad dressing consisting of oil, apple cider vinegar, tumeric, black pepper and pink himalayan salt (the salt is for my low blood pressure)
* only drinking fresh squeezed carrot juice, purified water, organic young coconut water, herb robert or green tea
* little to no chemicals in my food, water, beauty or household cleaning products
* no added refined sugar, because sugar feeds tumours
* as much fresh, organic food and as little processed food as possible
* taking supplements that boost my immune system
* avoiding microwaves and excess radiation (such as putting my mobile phone to my ear or unnecessary medical imaging exposure)
* fresh air, sunshine, rest, sleep and exercise (I love walking my dogs!)
* focussing on wellness, rather than on sickness
* maintaining a positive attitude
* never watching the news or reading newspapers that would only put me in a bad headspace
* staying as stress-free as possible
* having lots of fun and never running out of Bucket List items to do before I die
* daily giggle therapy (thanks to cute, funny YouTube videos)
* counting my blessings rather than my woes
* ocean therapy at every possible opportunity – living my passion gives me amazing quality of life :-)

I’ve also been a vegetarian for many years, and at this stage I have only been able to return to work part-time. To me, if the goal is to become healthy, it makes sense to adopt healthy , permanent lifestyle changes. Sometimes it can feel like a full-time job and to be honest some days I feel much sicker than others, but it’s totally worth it. I’ve found that the things I’ve outlined above give me a much greater sense of well-being than I even had before I discovered I was sick, and when I stop doing any of these things, I feel less well than when I did them.

I recommend this regime to anyone, whether to stay well if you are still blessed with your health, or to reclaim your wellness if you have been diagnosed with something nasty. Even if you just take one healthy tip from the list above, then this blog will have been worth writing and reading. If you are not sick, I beg you to do everything in your power not to become sick and to never take your health for granted! But if you are unwell, I hope that you will be able to find the joy in the suffering as I have done and the courage to do whatever will give yourself the best chance of getting well again.

Tank you for taking the time to read through the things that are keeping me alive, and for continuing to follow my blog so that I can keep sharing my underwater adventures with you – doing this gives me more joy than you could ever know! Believe it or not, you are a major part of my recovery – I really feel so honoured to have you with me on this journey.

Love and bubbles,
PT xxx

Dear Critters,

Today Spunky Abe took the day off work to take me diving at Flinders. We got brain freeze the minute we entered the water which was 12 degrees celcius but felt like it was 2 degrees. It made me wonder how and why ice divers do what they do …

Visibility wasn’t great. Needless to say, we did well to last just over an hour.

We spent some time playing with weedy sea dragons and those gorgeous schools of tiny silver fish I filmed just over a week ago (please see my post ‘This is Bliss’ if you haven’t yet checked out my short film ‘Mesmerise’).

As I always say, any hour underwater beats an hour on land. Keeping this post short and sweet for a change (just like the dive :-P )

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

I kid you not – today’s cold wintery dive with my buddy LP was filled with nudis and punks!

By nudis, I’m referring to nudibranchs, those gorgeous decorative sea slugs that Blairgowrie Marina is famous for.

We spotted at least 4 different varieties of nudibranch, including a pair mating on a pylon.

To understand what I mean by punk, check out the video above of an amazing decorator crab (aka spider crab) that has covered its shell with bright sponges and small branches of bright blue bryozoan in order to camouflage itself into its environment. (Actually, I couldn’t quite figure out if this fashion was punk or high fashion, straight off the catwalks under the piers in Paris … :-P )

Again, another fairly cold winter’s dive, but the sun was shining and the critters were out, including a lovely fiddler ray (also known as a banjo shark).

Tanks so much for taking this quirky little dive with me!

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

In some ways I wish that octopuses, stingrays, cuttlefish and sharks would magically appear on every dive. But most of the time, I am a Melbourne pier diver, and the truth is that on some dives, there is virtually no marine life to speak of.

In Australia, it is winter and the water is 10 degrees celcius. You jump from the landing of the pier, and instantly your ears hurt from the cold and your fingers begin to freeze. By the end of the hour-long dive, your wips are wike wubber, and your frozen toes long for the warmer waters of Fiji or Vanuatu or the Philippines.

But these are also the dives when you remember to appreciate the little things. Like a small blenny fish, poking his head out of his sponge-covered pipe to pose for you. Or the most simple of sea jellies, pulsing almost invisibly before your camera.

Some dives are simply about getting into the water to wash the worries and stresses of last week away before the next week begins. And some dives are purely an opportunity to remind yourself that life can be much sweeter and simpler than we sometimes allow it to be, and that we are all the richer for embracing its simplicity.

Today was one of those dives. As always, I am overwhelmed with gratitude.Yet again, I am grateful to my best buddy LP for sharing the ice-cold water with me.

Tank you so much for visiting my post. While you are here, please don’t forget to check out a few more of my underwater videos and image galleries :-)

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

Before every dive, my buddy LP and I make wishes for critters, and today’s dive at Flinders Pier definitely did not disappoint!

A stunning octopus was climbing a pylon; a draughtboard shark swam calmly across the weedy bottom.

Many weedy sea dragons swam in schools, while a large stingray swam around the pier in huge circles.

As always, LP was Critter Spotter Extraordinaire and yet again he was kind enough to share his amazing finds with me.

According to my medical specialists, this little pink duck should be having daily radiation and weekly chemotherapy.

But I am totally convinced that in my game of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’, scuba beats chemo – and salt water is the best medicine of all.

Another fabulous dose of Vitamin Sea helps me to face another week ahead. Long Live Scuba! :-)

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

I was thrilled when Geoffrey Whitehorn contacted me on Friday night and asked if I was up for a dive on Saturday. It had been a very difficult week with some truly ick news about my health, and I honestly needed this unexpected dive to clear my fuzzy head.

There were no big critters – just lots of weedy sea dragons, gliding through the milky water.

While photographing a nudibranch, I had a truly hilarious underwater moment as I found myself being randomly face-planted by a big school of plate-sized whiting. Something must have been chasing them towards the pylon I was focussed on, and if I didn’t have my reg in my mouth, I swear I would have swallowed four or five large fish whole! (That would have violated my vegetarianism a hundred-fold …)

This experience compared in giggle-value with the time a crazy orange scallop with hundreds of wild blue eyes dive-bombed me from a Blairgowrie pylon, then chased me through the water like a pair of wind-up grandma’s teeth (I suspect it mistook me for the next pylon – I laughed myself silly!)

And who can forget the time I handed LP my camera to sort out my technical difficulties, only to find an astonishing looking, football-sized tasselled angler free-swimming behind me – an event that has NEVER happened before or since! (Usually, they can barely be detected as they camouflage themselves masterfully against the sponges of a pylon.) Not knowing whether to squeal or scream,I snatched my troublesome camera back from LP’s unsuspecting hands. Then I came closer than I ever have in my life before to cursing as I battled my camera to get this once-in-a-lifetime shot of the most INSANE fish I have ever seen! Thank goodness despite my underwater panic attack, I managed to land this one, ridiculous shot:

Today, I also struggled to take any good photos or video, but I did manage to get one semi-decent photo of Geoffrey with a sea dragon, and he got a couple of really nice shots of me.

Some days, it’s not about nailing the perfect shot or getting the most amazing critters on video. Apparently, some days, I am satisfied with 100 minutes of cold water, a faceful of fish and some giggles that help to drown out the sorrows.

Sadly, in 261 dives, today was also the first time I ever witnessed a fish nibbling on a baited hook, only to be ripped in panic out of the ocean to that cruel world on the other side of the pier. Life really is such a mixed bag – one minute, you are wishing you could reach your dive knife in time to save a fish from some cruel fate; the next minute, a dozen fast-moving fish slap you in the face to teach you how to smile again.

Sincere thanks to my buddy Geoffrey Whitehorn – you couldn’t possibly know how much I needed this dive!

To that gorgeous random dog that decided I needed someone to play a feisty game of post-dive fetch with in the carpark, thank you too – you turned my frown upside down! (I so wish I had thought to take a selfie with you …)

And tanks once again to everyone who has chosen to follow me on this bizarre journey of life. Fasten your seat belts, friends – this ride is about to hit another speed bump …

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

Dear Critters,

Some weeks are so strange and surreal. Like when you leave work on Wednesday afternoon to get the results from your CT and PET scans the day before. And your oncologist tells you that your new tumour is too big and impacting too many vital organs for surgery to be an option. Without palliative treatment, you may only have months to live. If the proposed treatment slows your symptoms down, you might have another year or two, if there are no complications … Staring through the image of the enormous white tumour on his computer screen, you try to calculate how many dives you might have left. Quickly you realise it probably won’t be enough to empty your Bucket List that overflows with manta rays and great white sharks and blanket octopuses and whale sharks and more …

So the weekend comes, and you do what you always do when you need to clear the muck of life out of your head. You drive an hour down to the peninsula with your friends to submerse yourself as quickly as possible under one of the local piers. It is too early to tell your friends what you know, and besides – you don’t want to spoil the dive. Beneath the surface, it is impossible to think of anything else other than the cold salt water against your skin and the beautiful creatures that might appear to dance before your camera. Weightless in the water, there is no choice other than to forget that you are sick, and that you have truly left the job you love for the final time, and that no-one can tell you how many dives you might have left.

It has been many months since you last dived Portsea Pier. But you are with your amazing buddy who always manages to find a cuddlefish or two in these waters. More than ever, you need a cuddlefish today. Within minutes, your friend has activated his critter-spotting super-power, and you are gliding as one through the water with the most intelligent and intriguing critter in all of the ocean.  Funny little fish peer out at you from sponge covered logs, each of you in awe of the other’s simplicity and fragility.

After an hour, the conditions in the water go from serenity to more like the inside of a washing machine – the notorious tide is turning. You swim towards the beach, only to find large waves ready to smack you down each time you try to get up. Resistance is futile, and soon you are rolling on your back, like the proverbial beached whale in the shallows, being pounded repeatedly.

You begin to laugh uncontrollably, doing all you can to avoid a mouthful of angry waves doing their best to smash and drown you again and again. This relentless rolling and flailing and almost dying at the end of such a blissful dive is hilarious. Your tired body pounds endlessly into the sand and you know with all your heart that resistance is futile. Perfect laughter drives out all fear, pouring out of your mouth like all the life of the ocean itself. You roll and laugh and wait until your buddy can come to your rescue.

You understand that there is simply no need to panic. No need to lie down and die. No need to let the waves carry you out into the depths or smash you to pieces against the sharp rocks in the shallows. You count every dive as a blessing and every breath as a miracle. You let the purity of joy flood through your soul. Death will come for us all, but in this very moment, you are vibrantly, fully alive.

Breathe slowly and deeply. In those moments when you can’t seem to keep your head above the water, gently rest your face against the surface and peer in wonder into the depths below. They are not nearly as frightening as you once may have thought.

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

(Photo of PT courtesy of Julie Jones)

Dear Critters,

After getting rotten news about my health last week, it seemed more than appropriate to cross ‘Introduce My Baby Brother to Scuba’ off my Bucket List today, before I begin palliative treatment on Tuesday. My best buddy LP put a lot of work into helping make this happen, and I cannot thank him enough for his super-star effort. Here’s a picture of LP, Nathan and me right before our amazing dive under that pier …

To make the event even more special, my beloved dad Kirby and gorgeous step-mum Nancy decided to show up at Flinders Pier to surprise my brother for his first dive and to take some topside pictures for us. Just as Nathan uttered the words ‘I wonder what dad is thinking about all this right now?’, Kirby and Nancy appeared unexpectedly right before his eyes, as excited and proud as any parents could ever be.

What a perfect day to dive Flinders! Weedy sea dragons everywhere, a massive school of trevally, a Port Jackson shark, Shaw’s cowfish and so much more to see. Other divers reported seeing the resident draftboard shark and a huge cuttlefish out at the wreck. My little brother did a fantastic job at his first ever dive and came out of the water with a massive smile on his dial.

It has always been my greatest passion to share my blissful underwater world with others – to show them all the beauty I am so blessed to experience every time the ocean calls my name. I have been incredibly privileged to dive with LP most weekends over the past two and a half years, and our dives are always simply amazing, rejuvenating my tired body and washing all troubles away from my mind.

But this dive was truly one for the record books. I am always happiest when I am underwater, but today, sharing this incredible underwater world with my little brother for the very first time was the pure definition of happiness. Welcome to my world, Babe – you TOTALLY rocked your Dive 1!

Love, bubbles and a good measure of bliss,
PT xxx

Dear Critters,

I celebrated finishing my first palliative Quad Shot of radiation on Friday with a very special dive treat on Saturday. Spunky Abe took LP, Julie Bear and me out on his boat to Chinaman’s Hat off Sorrento where it seemed the sea lions had been waiting all morning for some divers to come to play with them.

Upon arrival, maybe 60 animals lie lethargically on the deck of the large wooden structure, and you could be forgiven for thinking on first impression that the individuals that make up this blubbery, immobile mass are just too large and lazy to move. But underwater, these sea lions (not to be confused with seals that do not have external ear flaps) are feisty, fearless, inquisitive, boisterous and very loud, dancing with all the grace of Rudolf Nureyev in one moment, then fighting with all of Mike Tyson’s ethics the next.

Some are total posers for the camera, while others play rough like naughty children, biting and wrestling each other in a flurry of hyperactive somersaults. Many are juveniles, learning skills and boundaries from their equally playful parents. Others delight in skidding across the ocean floor on their bellies, creating almighty silt storms, some stopping their slide strategically in front of the nearest camera lens.

Thanks to ample silt and endless fascination, I only saw my human dive buddies a couple of times during this hour-long adventure. At one point I was surrounded by up to 20 sea lions, many of them brushing against me, or even kissing my camera or biting my video light! I was a bit worried for a few moments that one or two of the big bulls of the group wanted to play their rambunctious biting games with me, so I spent a few fearful minutes filming with my forearm over my head for protection.

Dive 264 was delightfully, deliciously, mischievously fun, and I would absolutely love to do this again! What an incredibly awe-inspiring way to end a fairly challenging week. As I explained to my oncology nurse after treatment on Friday, while my prognosis may be dire, at this very moment I am as alive as anybody else. While I may not share the same luxury of choosing denial about the inevitability of death, living life to the full is such a wonderful distraction :-)

Heartfelt tanks to Spunky  Abe for this amazing adventure dive, and to those completely crazy sea lions of Chinaman’s Hat for reminding me just how much I truly love being alive. (If you ever need a lesson in what it means to embrace the moment, seize the day and live life to its fullest, make sure you pay them a visit!) And for anyone who is worried about one terminally ill Pink Dive Diva spending so much time underwater – don’t be! My oncologist recommended that I dive as much as I can while I can, so this liddle pink ducky is simply following doctor’s orders! :-P

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

ps This video is dedicated to my precious father Kirby who was busy breaking his wrist while I was underwater shooting this footage. I hope it puts a big, goofy smile on his face. Love you, Kirby xxx

pps Kirby is not his real name. My brother and I just call him that because most times when he is driving, he manages to hit the car tyres against the curb …

ppps Please like Pink Tank Scuba on Facebook and check out some more of my underwater videos and photos while you are here – tanks so much for visiting! :-)

Dear Critters,

I must confess that lately I have begun to feel a little lost. After many years of working in a job that I loved and now being unable to work due to terminal illness, I am forced to make many adjustments to how I use my time and the way I see my value, purpose and place in the world.

I often find myself losing track of the hours, the days and the weeks. Sometimes it seems beyond my ability to navigate the nebulous spaces between weekends to even discern when my next dive might be.

Last week, I dived with some seriously silly sea lions on Saturday, then again at Flinders Pier on Sunday. For the first time in a long time, there really wasn’t much to see at Flinders. When my Critter Spotter Extraordinaire swam straight past the rosy, rusted, sponge-encrusted engine block, I almost didn’t bother investigating it further, swimming only moments behind him.

Then a strange and unmistakable eye caught my own, beckoning me to come closer. For the first time in all my underwater life, a magical creature had hidden itself from LP and chosen to reveal itself only to me: an orange oracle flanked by mystical, translucent attendants, a spiked urchin above its head, as though adorned with wisdom’s hard-won crown.

‘You are not lost, Little One,’ whispered a voice only I could hear. ‘I have found you,’ and with that he reached out a reassuring tentacle to prove that he knew exactly who and where I was.

‘But I am frightened,’ I babbled through my bubbles, ‘I don’t think I know who I am anymore. Life can be so confusing sometimes.’

He reached back to me instantly, this time touching my camera lens. ‘You may not know who you are, but I know who you are,’ he spoke more clearly with watery thoughts than could ever be spoken on land with words.

The eye was eerily still, and I wondered whether he could truly see me at all. But physical sight has strange limitations. If we only know what we can physically see, we underestimate all that can truly be known.

‘There is more to this journey than can be seen with the eye, more than can ever be understood with your mind. I reach out to you here and now because at this very moment you are truly, fully, vibrantly alive, just as I am alive. You are more yourself now than you have ever been before. And in this place, you can never be lost, for every part of you is within your element.’

And when he knew that I had begun to absorb his ancient wisdom, his tentacle reached towards me one last time, as though a gesture of gentle reassurance, or quiet celebration of epiphany.

When I finally rejoined my buddy at the water’s surface, I asked why he had not stopped to film the octopus in the old engine block. ‘I peered in carefully as I swam past,’ he replied. ‘There was nothing to see but a spiky, yellow urchin.’

Did I imagine an octopus in the block, initiating contact and whispering words of wisdom for my ears alone? Such are the ocean’s sweetest mysteries that speak to my soul each time I sink below the surface. I may feel utterly lost on land, but underwater, I begin to remember who I am, and I slowly start to understand the strange new creature I might one day become.

Love and bubbles,

PT xxx

ps Tank you so much for visiting. While you are here, please like Pink Tank Scuba on Facebook and take the time to enjoy some of my other underwater videos and images :-) :-) :-)