Deep Blue: Why we love the sea ★★★★ Veruska De Vita Jonathan Ball Publishers
“I've always loved the sea. It's been this place of enchantment and mystery, and in a weird way, protection. And I say weird because a lot of people see it as something dangerous, a place that can do damage, a place of drowning. It's almost like a friend. I totally surrender to it. And when I'm in the sea, I just go with the waves.”
Author, journalist and thalassophile Veruska De Vita answers this regarding the subtitle of her book, Deep Blue: Why we love the sea.
De Vita's parents were born in Sicily, and she was raised on stories about the ocean; her dad's attraction, respect and reverence for it deeply embedded in her. “They lived off the fruits of the sea,” she explains of this symbiotic relationship.
Regrettably, humankind's relationship to natural life has turned parasitic: “Most people on the planet have emancipated themselves from nature. We're all on this planet together: if something goes wrong there, it's going to affect us, and vice versa. No amount of moving away from nature is going to change that.”
Her admiration and appreciation for the ocean and its occupants translates into a near-lyrical writing style, yet she is uncertain as to whether it's harmful to anthropomorphise the sea and the living creatures within.
“I tend to anthropomorphise,” she acknowledges. “I think of whales in terms of my own feelings and that, in itself, is trying to humanise an animal. I do it to my cat, and I have an awareness of it ... I try not to but I do.”
Whether it's “a bad thing”, De Vita doesn't know, believing that it's worse to claim that fish aren't sentient, which gives us free reign to brutally kill them, breed them in fish farms, and eat them owing to their “lack” of sentience.
“We're trying to explain the feelings of fish in terms of our own nervous system, where maybe they feel and feel death in a very different way. It doesn't mean that it's less.”
In writing Deep Blue, De Vita — who's favourite cetacean is the southern right whale (“their colouring, their size, their grace, I think they're absolutely magnificent”) — was introduced to the Cetacean Translation Initiative (Project CETI). Aimed at decoding sperm whale communication, she describes the endeavour as “amazing. Inter-species communication, from a language and linguistic point of view, can bring so much nuance to human language”.
Reflecting on and admitting to being — and thinking like — a homo sapiens, De Vita writes “I would ask so many questions, but I'm aware that they'd be from a human point of view. My approach would already be flawed.”
And if she had the opportunity to pose a question to our finned friends?
“Basic survival things common among mammals, like 'Where can I get food?' and 'Where can I sleep'?”
Alternating between De Vita's personal homage to the ocean, a narrative non-fiction approach to human interest stories, and stylistically scientific wording when writing about marine biology, De Vita is “uncertain about the genre”, yet remained cognisant of the structure throughout the chaptering process.
Emulating Poseidon's realm, De Vita wanted the structure to have a “loose” flow to it. “For me, the ocean isn't a linear thing. There are so many facets to it and the ocean space is so complex, it feels more about 'What do I actually leave out?'
“I decided to follow the journey, let the journey take me, which made it far more interesting and far more fluid and wave-like.”
Her oceanic odyssey introduced her to people with vastly different stories and experiences of the ocean, be they free divers, ice swimmers, conservationists, or abalone poachers turned commercial divers. She said free diving was seminal to her personal deep dive into why we love the sea.
She'd always wanted to free dive, and actually took the plunge, but lockdown derailed that goal. Undeterred, De Vita turned to social media, reaching out to “the world's best free divers. And they were so happy to talk to me because they were also bored and stuck in lockdown”.
De Vita explored the role the ocean plays in healing — be it physical or psychological — by speaking to extreme cold-water swimmer Kiki Bosch.
Bosch entered the public eye when a video of her swimming the Silfra fissure in Iceland's Þingvellir National Park (its temperature a glacial 2°C-4°C) in nought but a bikini, a mask and fins went viral.
Her journey into extreme cold-water swimming originated from a deeply traumatic event: while unconscious, she was raped by a male colleague who spiked her drink. “She found peace in cold-water swimming,” De Vita writes, quoting Bosch: “No matter how cold life might be at certain moments, there is always a way to breathe through it.”
Amber Fillary, a multi-world record holder South African ice swimmer and recovering alcoholic, similarly finds solace in the cold: “When she gets into that glacial water, she surrenders and feels protected, and at peace,” De Vita shares of their conversation.
Competition requirements for ice-swimming records stipulate that ice thickness of the body of water be 30cm, but, as Fillary explained to De Vita, “The ice thickness was only 25cm. With global warming it was very difficult to find a lake with 30cm of ice.”
After her discussion with Fillary, De Vita began to explore the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis. “The more I spoke to people who know the oceans intimately, the more I realised that the oceans are changing, and people are seeing dramatic changes.”
From the horrifying and unsustainable practice of longline fishing to beach pollution where up to eight tons of plastic can be collected in a day, De Vita opines that we can actively address, or attempt to mitigate, the consequences of unsustainable fishing practices to global warming through groundwork: “Educate people, speak to fishers who's livelihood depends on fishing, remove plastic pollution. It is systemic in the sense that everybody has to be put in the right direction.
“Teach children about the sea, the creatures of the sea, so they protect the sea because they realise it's a beautiful, living, breathing thing. If you love something, you can protect it.”
Our conversation ebbs and flows. How would she describe the ocean to someone who's never seen or smelled it?
“Ooh, I love that question! That's delicious!”
De Vita closes her eyes, and, in aquatic reverie, begins: “As you walk towards the ocean, there is a rumble and a hissing and a constant wall ... as waves crash ... as large volumes of water actually rise and fall on top of each other.
“The smell, it's salty. There's a little bit of seaweed. There's a smell of shelves and of ancient sand that's been there for probably millions or even billions of years,” she says, shut-eyed.
“You step into the water and it's cold. It feels like fingers tapping on your skin ... just stroking you. Sometimes silky, sometimes a little bit harder. It's foamy sometimes, and as you walk into it, it gets cooler and the rhythm of the waves starts to lap against your shins.
“There is a slight breeze, and on that breeze, there's a smell of something else. It's seabird ... it's almost ... ” Eyes still closed, she ponders the remainder of her sentence, “Yes! It's a bird smell. And then there's also the warmth of the sun on your skin. And there are also sections of the water that the sun has warmed up. So it's cold and it's warm, and now you can feel the water rising, getting higher ...
“The waves, the sound of the waves ... it's more of a crash now. It's almost like galloping horses. It's foamy, and then there's that hissing sound as the water retracts back and it's this constant rhythm of rising and then retracting back.” She inhales, opens her eyes, and similes sedately.
As for how gatvol she is of people asking her why she lives in a landlocked metropole situated on the Highveld?
“I'm not gatvol at all!” she laughs, “that's a very valid question and I ask myself the same thing quite often,” citing her family living in Joburg as the main reason for remaining in the City of Gold.
Nonetheless, she becomes “undone” when she hasn't been to, seen, or swam in the ocean for too long. “It's visceral,” she says of her connection to the deep blue.
Mariana Trench, watch out — when it comes to the sea, De Vita's ardour may just surpass your depth.
