I fell in Love with the Ocean

The Ocean is a place of excitement, a place of mystery, there is always something new. It's an unknown wild land. For me the ocean means feeling more connected than any other time.

When I was younger, I often wished I was a mermaid so that I could explore everything underwater without constantly coming to the surface to take another breath. Even now, many years later, I am always the only one who spends all the time in the sea while my friends lie on the beach and tan.

Mermaids do it better.

The first time I went scuba diving was at the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and from that moment on I wanted nothing more than to be underwater all the time. Two years later i did my first two diving licences in Kho Tao, Thailand. The plan was to do only the Open Water Diver course and then travel to the north of Thailand. But I was so fascinated by the first dives that I spontaneously decided to do the Advanced Open Water course as well and extended my stay on Kho Tao by a week.

After that, all I could think about was diving. I did my Divemaster a few months later in Tenerife and it was the best decision I could have made. Diving once or twice a day for three months, I was in heaven! Now some people are probably thinking: this girl is crazy! That's exactly what I am, crazy for the sea.

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For me, diving is not necessarily about seeing something super great, extraordinary, big, it's more about the feeling that diving gives you. Of course, it's a plus if a manta ray, a turtle or a whale shark happens to come by and say hello. But for me, it's mostly the feeling of being weightless, like I'm flying carefree through the fascinating underwater world.

It makes me happy.

It's more about how it's going to make me feel. It is something spiritual. You just put your gear on, walk into the water and you are there. You can just go and you are weightless and the only thing you can hear is yourself. You are just there. It is my direct path to nature to feeling connected to my surroundings. I can go in and have a spiritual experience by myself and then come back and go about my day, looking at people like you never believe what I just saw. I have to get in there, I have to be there, I have to experience it kind of first hand. I want to get wet, I want to put my face in the water, I want to get my hair wet. Putting my hands and my toes in the sand and thinking about where that water was coming from. How it is connecting me to pretty much everybody else that was on the planet. I leave myself salty most of the time because it's like: When am I going to go back in?!

It's a huge part of me and if it wasn't there I don't know who I would be without it.

- Jackobina