He is a monster of metal and rubber, a glass cyclops, an alien in a world he was never meant to visit. His voice is a hiss and a gurgle. He dips his head and begins.
There is magic in the water here. It seeps out of the soil and runs down the rock face to mingle with the salt sea in the fjord. We crawl across the mountains’ feet to take our place with the crabs in the cracks. The sea dragons float like frozen tongues of flame. We drift beside them in our slow freefall to the seafloor.
At the surface, we swam in a brilliant blue sky, but here we are lost in black space. Columns of weak, white light dance from our wrists. Red eyes hover at their edges. Here we are, warm and alone – help yourself.
There is magic in the water here. It seeps out of the soil and runs down the rock face to mingle with the salt sea in the fjord. We crawl across the mountains’ feet to take our place with the crabs in the cracks. The sea dragons float like frozen tongues of flame. We drift beside them in our slow freefall to the seafloor.
At the surface, we swam in a brilliant blue sky, but here we are lost in black space. Columns of weak, white light dance from our wrists. Red eyes hover at their edges. Here we are, warm and alone – help yourself.
However, during the 2021-2022 dive season, Milford Sound had, unusually, a dry January. It was the driest January in the past 30 years. In a land where it is not unheard of to receive a metre of rain in a single event, only 47mm fell over the entire month. With visibility extending up to 30 metres and with tourist numbers only at 10% of their pre-Covid levels, Zac Penman and Lance McKirdy had the opportunity to explore this environment during a rare moment in history.
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WORDS: NICK AINGE-ROY
PHOTOS: ZAC PENMAN
