As divers and snorkellers troop down the beach to board the boat waiting for us at the edge of the Arabian Sea, it’s pretty clear who is what. The divers are all outfitted in wet suits, while us snorkellers are in standard seaside fare — shorts and tees over our swimwear. We wade into the knee-deep water, climb aboard and settle into our places as the broadly smiling driver positions the lightest people to offset the heaviest ones. Then the motor roars into life, splutters a bit as the boat careens round and finally settles into a chugging drone as we set off, plowing through the metre-high waves of grey-green water sparkling in the morning sunlight.

It is a little before 7 am and we have all gathered at the diveshop at the Goa Marriott Resort hotel in Miramar, Goa and signed on for a diving and snorkelling trip. Leaving behind the hotel’s beachfront, we speed past the Governor’s mansion on a clifftop overlooking the ocean, and the dive masters make the introductions. The dive masters include two Britons and a Goanese who formerly worked as a diver with the Indian Navy. The divers include a Japanese girl training to be a dive master, a Finnish girl, and an Israeli youth, in a wet suit with a large tear on the rump. “Aha, a shark must’ve tried to get the diver who wore that wet suit on the last trip,” says Dagmar, a jolly German frau in her fifties. Dagmar, her husband, my companion and I are the four snorkellers.

We all join in to tease the Israeli, telling him that shark attacks are common in these waters. “This is going to be my 12th dive. I’ve done dives where there’ve been sharks around and I’m not scared of them. And I know there are no sharks here,” he says, smiling. Where was your last dive, he is asked. The Red Sea, he replies. “Oh, I’ve been there, too. The water there is brilliant and you can see a very long way down. Once, we were snorkelling with a group of divers who were exploring a shipwreck. We could see them and the shipwreck from the surface,” says Dagmar.

One of the dive masters explains that the sea off the Goa coast has comparatively poorer visibility than India’s other diving spots — Lakshadweep and the Andamans — because of the iron filings in the water. Strip mining is a local industry and, as if on cue, a rusty barge, laden with soil, appears as we speed past the mouth of the Mandovi river. The river is a distinct brown colour as it pours into the grey-green-blue seawater.

“Hey, look, dolphins!” says someone. We turn to see a pair, their sleek grey bodies gleaming in the sunlight, leaping over the waves in graceful arcs. They are only a few metres away and a dive master explains that it is the sound of the boat’s engine that has drawn them to the surface. “They come to see what the sound is,” he says. In a few seconds, they are gone. Dagmar tells me how she and her husband once had friendly dolphins swimming a few inches away while snorkelling somewhere.

Finally, after nearly an hour’s ride, the boat drops anchor — a large iron hook-shaped thing straight out of a 19th-century pirate tale — at a spot charmingly called Lobster Avenue. The divers hoist their scuba gear on to their backs, check each other’s equipment and somersault off the boat into the water. Then, pulling their masks on, they give one another the thumbs-up and sink from our sight. We crane our necks over the side of the boat for as long as we can see streams of tell-tale bubbles.

Then we get out of the clothes covering our swimsuits and trunks, and clean our masks. Spit, rub, dip. We put on our masks, rinse our fins with seawater, don them and, with slow, clumsy steps, climb down the ladder on the side of the boat into the water. I put my face into the water and see only dark green, unpopulated ocean. Dagmar and her husband swim towards the nearest of the three little islands surrounding us and I follow them. A few feet from the island, we peer into the water and I can see Dagmar’s arm pointing underwater to a miniature valley in the undulating landscape of dome-shaped outcrops and troughs as the island’s coast slopes away into the depths. Coral in rich shades of orange and yellow covers some of the rocks and swarms of barracudas are flitting about.

And then, in a moment that will forever live in my memory, a sergeant major appears out of a hollow. The fish is about the size of both my palms and is a brilliant yellow with broad black stripes. Bars of sunlight filter in from the surface, adding extra magic to the scene as they illuminate the clear water in a scoop in the rock where it pauses, about four feet beneath me. Then, like the dolphins, it is gone.

You can go snorkelling and diving in Goa with:

• Barracuda Diving India

Goa Marriott Resort,
Miramar, Panaji
Goa 403001
Tel: (91) 832-246 3333;
E-mail: barracuda@vsnl.com

• Goa Diving

145P, Chapel Bhat
Chicalim, Goa 403711
Tel: (91) 832-2555 117;
E-mail: goadivin@sancharnet.in