Graham
Patterson

Mahahual

I learned to dive in 2010, while I was teaching English in Thailand. In the spring of 2019 I spent two weeks diving in Mahahual, Mexico, on what had once been called the healthiest stretch of the second-largest reef system in the world. I had been there a few years before and was excited to go back.

What greeted me was a reef in drastic decline.

Seaweed covered the water as far as I could see and was piled waist-high on the beach. It shaded the coral and pulled oxygen out of the water as it rotted. Locals told me that kids used to be sent into the shallows to catch dinner by hand. Now the shallows were strung with nets, and workers were wheelbarrowing rotting seaweed off the sand. My dive instructor told me she had cried underwater more than once, witnessing an ecosystem in quick decline.

On one of my last dives, we saw a giant sea turtle in the distance. These turtles enjoy a lifespan similar to humans, I recalled. This beautiful creature had experienced the once-healthy coral reef where she was born, slowly at first, and now rapidly, begin to die. As I pondered, the turtle swam closer and closer. Before I knew it, she was only a foot away, looking me in the eye. Time stood still as I silently promised her that I would do everything in my power to help make her home the beautiful thriving place she once knew.