The unexpected chaos of plant and animal life animating the tidal swirl between my mask and the sandy bottom several fathoms below brought a gasp of amazement and the instant epiphanic knowledge that I was entering a mysterious natural environment unlike anything I had known, a limitless world of dynamic interaction between this planet’s living waters and its myriad denizens.

Those feelings of artistic attraction, adventure and feral danger are still with me, all these years later, along with the assurance that humans will never plumb that world’s last hidden depths, or know its most elusive and secret creatures – that the challenge of scientific exploration will always be there to attract new adventurers, new minds, new tools and technologies.

Earth’s oceans are truly mystical places, peopled by unimaginably magnificent creatures.