To Overcome a Fear of Wrecks

A paralysing phobia is hard enough to face on land, but underwater the challenges are more dangerous and daunting...

- Gill McDonald

For over 25 years I had immersed myself in a myriad beautiful underwater settings around the world. For all that time, many people had tried to convince me that a shipwreck was just another rich and fascinating marine habitat. Full of life, not death.

However, in my mind’s eye a wreck was dark and cold and in the wrong place, lonely and lost on the seabed. Crafted with sweat and toil in a distant shipyard, filled with noise and life, now she lay beneath, crumpled and silent – forever.

Whatever caused her demise, the moment of impact with reef or sudden boom of bomb was usually catastrophic. It is impossible to imagine how it must have felt and what must have been witnessed in those terrible, final moments. The concept of donning clanging, dangling breathing gear and stepping into water once boiling and screaming with loss was utterly daunting. The echoes of the past were loud and awful. To lay eyes on the broken remains even from above was a frightening prospect for me, and I felt dread and sorrow.

What was I afraid of? It is very difficult to articulate. Ghosts? Sure, but not entirely, and the feelings were the same whether life was lost or not. To look and see something below that should be above, it made me shake and I felt nauseous and deeply emotional.

But I love to dive and capture the images that await me – to float weightless and free in the colourful, living world beneath the waves. So, at last, fears pulsing in my head, I finally learned to believe what people had told me.