Twenty-Six

Twenty-six turtles in one dive. After the tenth it stops feeling believable.

Bunaken is a wall that drops into deep water, so a turtle leaving the reef does not swim away. It rises, into open blue, with the whole sky above it. In the afternoon that sky is a sun.

You do not arrange a picture like this. You put yourself below and behind, wait for the animal to lift, and hope it crosses the light. The aperture is closed almost all the way so the sun becomes a star rather than a smear, and two strobes are pulled back wide so the shell keeps a little of its own colour against the glare. Small fish drift through the beams like dust. Then the turtle is gone, up, and there are twenty-five more.