Poor Knights Islands

Yeah.

I think the spark of the idea really came for me when I got an opportunity to do some seabird research on some of the offshore islands, um, Poor Knights and Mercury Islands, and getting out to those places really does feel like you're stepping back in time and, and getting this chance to sort of experience what the New Zealand environment, um, sounded like, and it's, it's absolutely deafening.

Sort of this chorus just goes right throughout the day, and then the seabirds arrive back, and they're just crash landing through the trees.

They're plummeting into the ground.

It can also be far more substantial.

My author's note for Between Two Breaths is a mini-essay on how I left London in 2000 to go travelling after the stress of working in the city in the 90s, and found peace diving beneath the waters of the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand.

Later, that led to diving alone, and a moment where I made the choice to carefully ascend when everything in me wanted to stay down in the blue.

That author's note also includes recommended books on freediving as well as a documentary, and links to a solo episode of my Books and Travel podcast where I talk more about why I loved scuba diving.