Dear Critters,

I have so many videos and photos to share with you from my dives yesterday and today at the annual spider crab migration at Rye  Pier. Today, crab numbers had begun to build – perhaps there were as many as 10,000, but who can count such an invasion? So when this beautiful spotted seahorse saw me take an interest with my camera, it decided that staying as close to me as possible was its best chance of survival.

It swam out from between two pylons, pressing itself so close to my lens that in many frames it was quite out of focus. At one point, it darted right under the camera, trying to wrap its long tail around the finger of my glove where it might be safe to rest. Where can you hide when everything in your world has without warning transformed into a threat – when the life you once knew has disappeared and there is nowhere at all that you can feel safe in your own world?

How frightening and cruel and utterly exhausting. I know that feeling. One year ago today, I was in hospital, hooked up to every nightmarish machine I could imagine, completely petrified. Every time I opened or shut my eyes, strange, unwelcome figures entered my room, ready to poke and prod, taking me to new levels of terror and pain. I was no longer a person but a professional patient, so totally trapped that I wondered when I would lose my mind, and whether I might truly die before I even had a chance to recover. I doubted whether my life and my world would ever feel safe and familiar again …

Precious Seahorse – I am so sorry that your peaceful world of sponge-encrusted pylons has been entirely overtaken by an invasion of monsters, and that every moment for you feels full of threat. I stayed with you as long as I could. I pray that you were able to find somewhere safe to sleep.

Love and bubbles, PT xxx