I’ve been diving for three years, and I’ve had my fair share of memorable ones. But every now and then, there’ll be special days that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

To tell the truth, this picture only tells part of the story - the truly special sighting of the day was a pair of soaring eagle rays in the second dive. But something about this encounter right in the middle of the day’s last dive, which before then was looking pretty mundane after the eagle rays, just sticks with me.

How I admonished my friends repeatedly to “think turtles” before we entered the water. That moment when I had given up on anything interesting in the dive, when the divemaster suddenly gave the hand signal for a turtle sighting. Being stunned by the size of this majestic hawksbill, noticing all the textures of the scales on its face and neck. How relaxed it was, feeding on coral, with five divers not two feet away from it. How it finally glided up and away from us to take a breath at the surface, how we couldn’t follow it because we were human and would get the bends if we did.

It was nothing short of magical.

And that’s what diving is all about: the chance to have an encounter that reminds you that we humans merely share this planet with other beautiful creatures.