Since the very first time I dived into the ocean, I’ve come back and written about what I saw and how it feels to be there. My dive logs and travel journals overflow with the memories and observations I wanted to hold onto from the sea: colours, shapes and movements; hot pink sea slugs; fish so silvery they could be made from a living, liquid mirror; kelp swirling in the current that made me dizzy and tricked me into thinking the seabed was sliding to and fro; returning from a dive to find a rainstorm had broken out, drawing circles on the sea’s ceiling overhead.

Then there came a point when I started writing words about the ocean specifically for others to read. I don’t remember making a conscious decision to do so. It came as naturally as going to the ocean in the first place, learning to dive, immersing myself in the Innerview and feeling like I belong there. Nobody told me to.

Gradually, writing about the sea became a bigger part of my life until I decided I would make a living this way, and with it my view of the ocean has been expanding ever wider. I began writing not just about my own experiences, but reimagining on the page species I haven’t seen and places I would never visit in person, channelling the thrill of discoveries made by others: gossamer worms that spin acrobatic pirouettes through the twilight zone; shrimp with giant eyes that take up most of their head; palm-sized sharks that hide in the deep by glowing blue and matching the dim light that trickles down from above. I became a story seeker, hunting for ideas that fizz in my mind and that instantly I can’t wait to tell other people about.

It has always been a privilege to send my words out into the world and to know there are people out there who are devoting their time and attention to reading and listening to them. Then a shift happened when readers started to get in touch and write their own words back to me. People I’ve never met tell me how my stories have changed the way they think about and see the ocean. I love to read about what it was that resonated most with them in my words. And I love to hear of their own encounters and discoveries in and by the sea, often accompanied by photos and the question: can you tell me what this is?

Everyone I hear from in emails and social media, occasionally from letters in the post, and who come up and chat with me after public events, has helped me to see that my stories, written and spoken, have a particular kind of enduring power. I realise now that I’m passing on secrets from the sea that stay with people. And so, just like me, they feel the joy of noticing things and wondering, and paying close attention to their own Innerview.

This is how this short essay appears in the special Oceanographic publication, The Innerview