Greetings to Elie Le Moine, Noiseau, France

Diving is about meeting people and sharing as much as it is about the personal experience of communing with the underwater world. Case in point… Today I received an package in the mail from Elie LeMoine, a diver who I was paired with by chance during my last dive trip to Mexico. Inside was an outstanding video of his recent vacation on a Red Sea Live-aboard dive boat.

When Elie and I were buddied up, we didn’t share a common language beyond our scuba hand signals. After trying to find a common language and coming up blank – I smiled at him and said “Plongee!” and gave him the OK signal. I was hoping that what I said was something to extent of “Let’s dive”, but for all I know of French, I may have told him that I was a proctologist and he was my next patient.

He turned out to be an excellent comfortable diver with outstanding buoyancy control and patience (I was shooting photos and moving along like a tortoise.) I made sure to get some shots to share with him online when we I got back to Philadelphia and posted them on OPhoto. I sent him to the site by using a French translator that I found on the web.

The video the Elie sent me was outstanding. There was Elie diving with a HUGE Napoleon Wrasse, enjoying some exhilarating drift dives and seeing anemones, angel fish, lionfish, and corals that looked like masses of worms – almost all species that I have never seen in the Caribbean. It’s been more than 20 years since I have been in the Red Sea so I have to say that I really appreciated him sending me out the video.

At one point in the video a beautiful stingray is swimming and he shudders for a second. Then he continues swimming. I backed up the video and looked again. No question in my mind; this was the first time I had ever seen a stingray sneeze.

Diving is like that. I have met tons of people over the years from places that I have never visited, sometimes never even heard of, and more often than not the interdependence of buddying up with them creates friendships that other tourists rarely find.

Thank you Elie for sending me that great video. I hope that we can dive together again soon.