You're not supposed to smile underwater

I stopped breathing, for just a second, and floated. I just looked down at it all - fish like I'd never seen everywhere, from a sand-colored sting ray to a trumpetfish the length and width of a broomstick to a cod the size of a manhole cover affectionately dubbed the Sweet-lipped Cod. The fish were content to let me hang around and watch, give me the occasional 'can i help you?' look. All gliding by in different shapes, colors, patterns... effortless, kaleidoscopic and serene.

But it was actually the coral that got me. The variety of boulder-sized mounds, towers and honeycomb structures that I swore could not be natural -- they seemed just a little too much like art. Each piece looked different and sculpted-- leopard patterned bulge there, intricate fan-shape there-- and they stretched on further than I could see. I stopped above something that looked like a bush, little white tendrils flowing with the currents. Until, it seemed, the current changed, and the bush changed to red. And then back to white, swaying in the underwater wind.

I guess I started breathing at some point there. And I know that I smiled at some point too, because I had water in my mask. You're not supposed to smile underwater.