Underwater Awakening

How one of nature’s most fragile undersea creatures changed a diver’s life

- ROGER HANSON

DIVE A FEW FEET UNDERWATER and you’re in another world. It’s quiet down there. You can hear yourself think. If you’re me, you stop thinking so much. You slow down. Look around. See the world maybe a little more the way God intended.

I’m a restless guy. Married four times. Moved all over the country. Grew up on a farm and later worked as a teacher and coached football, wrestling, and track.

Scuba diving is what I keep coming back to. I learned to dive 30 years ago. I’ve been a diver almost half my life. No matter where I live, I find water and dive. I’ve chainsawed holes in the Wisconsin ice and plunged in.

I always say I’m a C-minus on land but a Mensa genius underwater. I don’t mean I get smarter; I mean I become a better person down there. I’m kinder. More patient. More tolerant and observant. My rough edges smooth out, and I become the calm, generous guy I try—and mostly fail—to be on land.

I never knew why that was until a few years ago. That’s when I made a tiny discovery during one of my routine dives. I was in shallow water off long Beach, an industrial port city south of Los Angeles. I looked down and saw a bright orange seahorse, 4½ inches long, hovering near the ocean floor.

That seahorse didn’t belong there. The waters near Long Beach are too busy and too cold. Seahorses are shy and prefer warmer water. San Diego marks the northern limit of Pacific seahorse habitat, some 110 miles away.

I swam closer, fascinated and enchanted by what I was watching. I didn’t know it then, but that little seahorse had just changed my life.