It makes the depths seethe like a cauldron;
It makes the sea boil like an ointment-pot.
Its wake is a luminous path;
It makes the deep seem white-haired.
There is no one on land who can dominate it,
Made as it is without fear.
Job 41:23–25
Should you choose/be called upon to take up SCUBA diving, there are many things that you can worry about. One can imagine getting stuck somehow and running out of air, or being attacked by a shark (or more likely, a snapping turtle1), or getting the bends, which one might not know the physiological mechanism of, but which one definitely knows is something that divers can get and that probably could kill a person. Once you’ve learned a little bit about diving, these fears do not necessarily disappear, rather, they can be replaced with new and exciting sources of anxiety, such as the fact that if you hold your breath while ascending from a SCUBA dive, your lungs will literally explode.
For an inveterate worrier such as myself, diving seems like it would be a challenge. And yet, whether because it is a required duty of my position or because I have resigned myself to my own mortality,2 diving so far has not been that hard. The hardest part is putting on the wetsuit, which on a particularly muggy day is sort of like cooking your entire body sous-vide. When you’re underwater, though, you’re glad to have the extra insulation, and once you adjust your buoyancy so that you’re no longer supporting the weight of the SCUBA apparatus,3 it’s, well, like you’re floating. The whole experience is actually pretty relaxing, once you remember that you’re able to breathe.
To my moderate embarrassment, the thing I fear most about diving is not the depth, the pressure, or the lack of oxygen, but the reason we’ve all been trained to dive in the first place: variable milfoil. As longtime SLA fans will know, variable milfoil (Myriophyllum heterophyllum) is an invasive aquatic plant present in many of New Hampshire’s bodies of water, including the Squam lakes, and if left unchecked, it will spread quickly and grow densely, outcompete native plants, reduce biodiversity, and accelerate eutrophication. None of these is the reason that I am afraid of it. It is not toxic,4 nor thorny, nor even carnivorous.[5] And yet, just the sight of it truly scares me.
Because I don’t feel ridiculous enough already, the best comparison I can make for my fear of variable milfoil is the ice-cold dread of being underwater in the ocean, spotting the dim silhouette of some distant leviathan, and realizing that it’s a much better swimmer than you are.6 Once the diver has kicked up enough sediment from the lakebed (and despite the diver’s best efforts, they are always kicking up sediment), it’s hard to see even a few feet ahead, and so as you search for the next plant to pull, it looms suddenly out of the murk, hanging ominously still in the water. Maybe it’s the stillness that makes it unnerving—while I’m struggling to keep floating right-side-up, the milfoil sits perfectly poised, perfectly adapted to its environment, existing without effort.7 One becomes aware that despite it being non-native, against humans, the milfoil has the home-field advantage. Underwater, the milfoil’s bushy tendrils become alarmingly tentacular, and the silt trapped by the leaves makes the branches dark despite their unnaturally bright foliage. Marine ecosystems are full of ambush predators; a large milfoil seems poised at the very least to defend itself, if not to lash out the moment you stray too close.
Variable milfoil cannot hurt anyone directly. It is soft and sort of gelatinous, and also it cannot move on its own. In that respect, my fear of it is irrational. And yet, I wonder if my atavistic repulsion is not so ridiculous after all: is it not alien to this ecosystem? Is it not a threat to this lake and most of the lives within it? Do the depths not seethe, silently, at its presence? At least the faint panic8 the milfoil provokes in me is good motivation to extirpate it—it would be easy to see its density and extent, to sense the impossibility of digging out every single fine white root, and to see oneself as merely delaying the inevitable. But M. heterophyllum was nearly eradicated from Squam once, before the pandemic paused diving and gave it a chance to recover,9 and thus I have to believe it can be eradicated again. And if we need to fear it in order to fight it hard enough, then let us be afraid. It sure isn’t afraid of us.
1 This is still not very likely.
2 In a “death is natural and we’re all part of nature” way, not, like, a weird way.
3 The A in SCUBA stands for Apparatus, so this is redundant, like “PIN number” or “ATM machine.” But it sounds weird otherwise, so you and I both just have to deal with it.
4 I am told that it can be and has been eaten by humans (though do not try this at home), although the fact that no other native animals are willing to eat it should tell you something.
5 Unlike its native lookalike, floating bladderwort, which is one of the most sophisticated (Wikipedia’s word, not mine) carnivores in the plant kingdom. I find floating bladderwort innocuous.
6 I’m thinking about the whale scene in Finding Nemo, which apparently left a deeper mark on my psyche than I thought.
7 One concept from SCUBA training that has lodged in my mind is “the work of breathing,” which refers to the energy expended to inhale and exhale (surprise! It’s greater underwater), but also comes in handy when you’re really tired at the end of the day.
8 Not actual panic, which is one of The Worst Things You Can Do Underwater, just short of holding your breath while ascending. But a faint panic.
9 The virus really just can’t stop winning, can it?
Peter is an Education and Outreach assistant serving at the Squam Lakes Association. In his free time, catch him leaving Letterboxd reviews after movie nights with his coservers. Learn more about Peter here.