The sensation nagging from my left heel

had become so strong that it couldn’t be ignored. I was standing in the sea up to my knees just a few yards from the shore, and a small but highly opportunistic fish had found the hole in my skin from a mosquito bite too good a source of nutrition to resist.

OWWW!

Round here the fish will swim right up to your ankles – and eat you alive if they think it’s worth it!

We’ve been snorkelling quite a bit over the last few days, and although the novelty is wearing a bit thin now, it’s certainly still interesting – you never know quite what the sea will show you. There’s also no guarantee you’ll ever see the same thing again, since nothing apart from rocks is fixed and there is quite a bit of water movement going on. That coupled with the slight haziness in the water most of the time and the huge area that the seabed covers makes even locating the same spot twice quite tricky without using landmarks on the shore as a guide.

The first time we ever snorkelled was in Greece: 1987 from Hanioti beach in the Kassandra peninsula of Halkidiki. The only stuff we have left from that time are the flippers I bought, all old-fashioned black rubber that has slightly perished and begun to crack a little around the foot holes. They are a little loose on my feet and lack rigidity in the paddle section, but are adequate for my level of ability and the small amount of use they get. Nostalgia prevents upgrading at this point in time, and there’s a certain déjà vu remembering the flippers and masks my own parents had that my brother and I tried out (and probably ruined – rubber was much less durable 40 years ago) in the bath as small children. Our masks and snorkels are much more recent, and ironically (because we bought cheap first time round) of lower quality than the originals we had.

Beginning to snorkel is a real challenge even if – or maybe especially if – you’re a competent and regular swimmer. There’s something about giving your lungs permission to operate that defies all that is natural when your face is under water, and even after a couple of times, can still require an act of faith to believe you’ll draw fresh air and not acrid sea water into your lungs on the first suck through the mouthpiece. We eventually found the best way to start was by getting everything in place before swimming and steadily breathing through the snorkel while lowering oneself gradually, allowing the water to creep over chin, mouth and then slowly up the front of the mask. Water can sometimes leak in around the edges of the mask, which is very off-putting, and pressurising the mask by exhaling through the nose seems to be the complete solution for this.

Of course some people just put it on for the first time and enjoy their new found freedom. These days it’s all quite instinctive, though for the first time after a long break I’ll enter the water carefully, rather than just plunging straight in.

The water off Thermi beach is of excellent clarity on calm days, of which we’ve had a few including that day described in my earlier post, but mostly it’s a little murky. Not like the sea off Britain, which seems to resemble a kind of green fug if you’ve ever swum wearing goggles there, but like looking through a gentle fog that blurs and masks objects more than about 30 to 40 feet away. Weed banks make their presence known by casting a dark shadow in the far distance, while fish appear ‘silently’ into one’s field of view, fading from sight as distance increases and their natural camouflage does it’s job.

The beach itself starts off with small-medium stones with the odd patch of course sand that turns into finer sand on the way out. In places there are rocks and weed beds, which can hide sea urchins and sharp objects: I cut the heel of my left hand on something a few days ago when I was fooled by the altered distance perception that occurs under water and pushed against something sharp. The weed itself is almost uniform, and takes the form of brown flat strips, about 1cm wide and anything from a couple of inches to a couple feet long. There are also large open areas with tube-like structures protruding, clams about 3 or 4 inches across which would close at my approach and curious pits with small black holes at the bottom. Here and there are tracks like ordinance survey footpath markings written on the map of the sand, all with a tall, pointed shell at the end indicating a hermit crab has been on the move. The curious brown objects called sea cucumbers can be seen sometimes, although I am cautious about these, remembering how Ben once picked up something like one, which turned out to be a fire ragworm, and received stings that hurt for several days. Depth is highly variable and bears little relationship to distance from shore, with the water being knee-deep 150 yards out in places, yet in the designated ‘swimming channel’ being more than 7 feet deep.

Swimming with a snorkel is unlike almost any other for of locomotion. Natural buoyancy keeps the body comfortably weightless by the surface, and the snorkel takes away all demands to keep one’s face above water. Instead one makes gentle motions with hands or feet to guide you above the vista that opens up as you progress above almost everything.

With care it’s quite reasonable to snorkel in water no more than about 12 inches deep, and being so close to the bottom throws everything into amazing clarity. Shells sparkle, ordinary stones look like gems and tiny fish become objects of wonder. Further out vision does become a little less sharp, but the possibilities of experience expand enormously. On one occasion I noticed what appeared to be a sparkling dust cloud in front of me, with pairs of glittering particles close together, and each pair moving in coordination with the others. As I got closer I could see that it was in fact a shoal of tiny fish, each less than a centimetre long and almost perfectly transparent except for the digestive system and the eyes, which were the pairs of particles I had seen.

Sometimes I recognise fish from commercial aquariums, bright purple and yellow, flat sliver discs, sometimes plain, sometimes with black bands front and rear, sometimes with multiple vertical stripes. On the bottom are long, slender fish with brown mottles to blend with the weed or green/yellow bands that match the sand patches, each about 4 inches long. On one occasion I was making my way over a bed of weed close to the surface when I found myself surrounded by a shoal of yellow and blue striped mullet, feeding on the weed bed. There must have been at least 50 of these plump, muscular fish between 6 and 12 inches, and they seemed quite happy to graze on the weed while I watched them, holding position as quietly as I could, breathing shallow breaths in order to not disturb them. Or maybe they had the last laugh, swimming past me while defecating green weedy looking fishy faeces until I swam off.

Yesterday I scraped the covering off a long rock, looking for evidence of tool marks or any other signs of human involvement (saw none). Within moments the area was full of fish seeking to cash in on the newly available food source I had uncovered for them. Everything from small silver fish the size and shape of a large coin through catfish to stripy wrasse types, and all quite fearless. The seas here are very fertile.

Further south from the hotel, but still within swimming distance lay the (few) remains of a Roman port, close by to the prehistoric settlement mount. I suspect a lot of the ‘interesting’ bits have disappeared, either into collections, or more likely, just been used as building materials for homes and walls. There is one pillar to be seen still, a square column of rock about 12 inches on a side and 6 feet long, with a base about 2 feet square and 6 inches thick attached to one end. Some of the other slabs and chunks of rock also look like they may have been manipulated at some stage, but any easily spotted evidence has long since either been worn off or is covered by the ever present weed and molluscs that adorn every surface.

After between 30min and 45min the mask starts to become uncomfortable, the taste of salt in the mouth unpleasant and I’ll head for the shore.