FIFTEEN, FEISTY AND FED UP

Hey everyone, my name is Kyla. I’ve technically been a blogger since this website was launched, but this is my first post. At first, I simply couldn’t find time to research and write, life does get busy! However, after a while, I began to lose sight of why I wanted to write for FED in the first place. How was I supposed to write when I had lost sight of what it was that I’d wanted to write about?

Well that all changed in September. I had just finished all of my assessment for Term 3 at school, and I was headed off on school camp. We were able to choose what camp we had wanted to go on, and I had chosen to go scuba diving. When I chose to go on that camp, I had done it because I had friends going, and I thought it would be fun. What I didn’t realise was how much scuba diving affected me and my outlook on life in general.

We stayed on Stradbroke Island, which is beautiful of course by itself, and went diving at Shagrock. During the hours of online training that we’d had to complete before being allowed to go on camp, we learnt methods to use whilst underwater in order to minimize our impact on the sea life that we’d be swimming with. That was just the beginning of the lessons that I learnt on camp. It was when things got hands on that I started to think more.

On our first day of ocean diving on the way to Shagrock, a whale decided to put on a show next to our tiny boat. All my life I’d been told that whales were huge, but it wasn’t until there was one next to me that I realised just how large they really are. A human is nothing compared to the average sized whale!

During the first day of diving and the beginning of the second day of diving, we performed a series of skills in order to be granted our licenses. Our last dive on the second day, however, was more of a joyride as we were allowed to guide the group around coral reefs and a car wreck ourselves. To say I wasn’t feeling good would be the understatement of the century; on the previous dive whilst performing a skill, my regulator had filled with water and I couldn’t clear it. I ended up breathing in a lot of water while I was trying to fix my regulator, and felt faint for the rest of the dive. Being underwater, I couldn’t quite communicate properly, and no one knew what had happened to me until we reached the surface for a break between our dives. Basically, I was afraid that I was going to pass out on the ocean floor during this last dive. Once I was down there, however, my worry slipped away simply by looking around.

I was disappointed to see some of the destruction to coral I saw, a lot of it was dead and colourless. The rest, however, was a vision. We swam alongside Wobbegong sharks and colourful schools of fish amongst beautiful shaped and patterned coral. On the way up we even saw a manta ray! During all of this excitement, I realised that the dead coral that I had seen at first could have been just as beautiful as the rest of the coral that we got to explore, if it weren’t for the pollution of water, or the sand mining that occurs around Stradbroke Island. It was simply a symbol of the destruction that humans have caused to the incredible planet that we’re lucky enough to have. It gave me more reason to write for FED, and to campaign for what I believe in.

It took months to be able to write this. Life is busy, after all. But its different this time; I have found sight of why I wanted to write for FED in the first place.

Here is a photo that was taken after our first day of ocean diving. We were the only four girls on the camp. We had been friends before of course, but after seeing what we did together, we will now share the bond of having the best experience of our lives together.

- Kyla Hunter

#Motivation #Animals