The diver who counts the fish
The notebook is waterproof.
The notebook is waterproof.
Ali writes in it underwater with a pencil, crouching on the sandy bottom between coral heads while a school of blue-striped snappers parts around him like a curtain.
He is conducting a fish census, the same census on the same reef at the same time each month for eleven years. The data goes to a research institution in Colombo. He has never met anyone from the institution.
I do it because someone should, he says afterwards, drying his face on the boat deck. If no one counts, you do not know when things change.
The reefs at Addu were badly bleached in 1998 during the Indian Ocean warming event. Ali was young then but he remembers what the reef looked like before. He started counting afterwards, motivated by something between grief and the need to pay attention.
The reef has recovered, mostly. Some species are back in numbers. Others are not. The data tells a story that no one would know otherwise.
We dive together on the afternoon census. He moves slowly and methodically, pencil moving across the slate. Around us the reef goes about its business, feeding, hiding, hunting, growing, indifferent to being counted.