Taking The Plunge

ACCORDING TO THE WWF, BY 2050 THERE’LL BE MORE PLASTIC IN THE OCEAN THAN FISH. MOGAMAT SHAMIER MAGMOET IS WORKING ON CHANGING THAT. THIS IS HOW HE’S CLEANING UP THE OCEAN – ONE DIVE AT A TIME.

- Megan Flemmit

Staring out at the ocean, with his feet in the sand, excitement filled the then-five-year-old Shamier Magmoet. Going to the beach for the first time was a rite of passage not many kids from his neighborhood experienced at his age. It’s a day he recalls quite vividly. “I remember how excited I was to see this ‘big swimming pool’,” he laughs. “I also remember being very fearful, because I saw a man drown that same day.”

Despite witnessing such a tragic event, Shamier kept going back to the beach. “It was such a peaceful and safe place,” he explains. “We would often go to escape the busy and sometimes scary scenes of our homes on the Cape Flats.”

Years later, when he resigned from his job at a structural engineering firm, Shamier returned to the one place he always felt at peace – the sea. “I liked my job, and I liked the people I worked with,” he explains. “[But] I left because I felt that I needed to spend more time with family, and experience life.”

For seven years he’d worked seven days a week. His unforgiving schedule left him with no time to pursue the things he was passionate about. Giving up his job left him with the freedom to brave the unknown and discover new parts of himself.

TESTING THE WATER

Once you experience something, you want to learn more about it. Once you learn more about it, you start to love it. And once you love something, you want to protect it with every fiber in your body. That’s exactly what happened to Shamier when he went freediving for the first time. For years he’d watched the videos the Cape Town Freediving group posted on Facebook. Now that he was unemployed, he had the time to give it a try.