Many years ago I used to be keen diver.  I still am a keen diver, but only in theory and on dry land.  In practice, I get seasick on a damp lawn.  As every diver will tell you, there are two stages of seasickness.  The first is when you are afraid you are going to die.  The second is when you are afraid that you won’t.  So my time as a keen diver consisted of a few moments of extreme fulfilment and happiness, interspersed with long periods of green-tinged misery. Some of the happier moments I can recall during my truncated dive career include dropping down on the wreck of the Produce off Aliwal Shoal, watching quick fleets of harlequin goldies and lumbering potato bass the size of sports cars.  I remember swimming down an anchor chain to the wreck of the Maori off Cape Town’s Duiker Point, being dive-bombed by seals in water like clam chowder.  It was nerve-racking to be submerged in thick yellow fog with these torpedo-like animals looming out of the gloom and rushing at you with mouths agape and teeth gleaming.  A kelp-dive out in the icy Atlantic was memorable for the ice-cream headache, the light shining down through the waving kelp like shafts of sunlight from cathedral windows and small shoals of translucent jellyfish like a tiny corps-de-ballet. Then there were night dives at Sodwana over shelves of coral, with little umbrella worms coming out of their holes and glowing faintly in the dark, looking like miniature Christmas trees, while the wash of phosphorus makes you feel as if you are swimming amongst starlight.] There were the dolphins of Port Elizabeth (and before anyone complains about us molesting dolphins, I must put the record straight – the dolphins were playing games with us).  This was one of the high points of my life:  we stayed down and romped with these animals until our air ran out, and once we knew we would have leave these smiling creatures to surface we did so with a sense of loss that I have never been able to forget. Despite the fact that the mere smell of neoprene is enough to give me the heaves, I still follow dive news with interest.  This is why, when I heard about two new dive sites off the east coast at Lake St Lucia, I pricked up my ears.  About ten months ago, two barges ran aground off the shore just south of Cape Vidal.  After exhaustive research it was decided to scuttle the two and create artificial reefs.  The whole phenomenon of artificial reefs is a curious one:  all shipwrecks automatically become artificial reefs.  When the Americans bombed the Japanese base at Truk in the Pacific they created a wonderland for the diver out of the sunken battleships.  Sometimes conservation authorities deliberately sink some large solid object in order to create a reef (there is a celebrated incident, which might just be true, of a US millionaire who sank his Rolls Royce off the coast of Florida as an artificial reef to prevent his estranged wife from getting her hands on it). The good thing about ships that are scuttled is that scientists know to the minute when the sinking took place.  They have been able to go down shortly after the mud settles, and keep their beady eyes on developments.  It is the most marvellous research tool and a lot of fun besides. The process is usually like this:  when this huge behemoth comes crashing down from the ‘sky’, all the little marine critters head for the hills.  It doesn’t take long, however, for them to put their noses out of hiding to see what all the fuss is about, much like a curious kitten.  Within days, a few of them have taken up residence in nooks and crannies, and the various algae and slugs have already checked the place out as a desirable residence.  Within a month the wreck sports a coating of sediment and slime, which gives the fish something to eat, and so (just like Christmas visitors) the newcomers decide to stay. Within a few months the corals have made tentative tracks in hospitable places, and within a year the outlines of the wreck have been softened by an entire metropolis of fish and sea life.  The algae and corals have attracted the small fish, which in turn have attracted the large fish, and the entire place buzzes like an inner-city neighbourhood. It is quite usual for new species of fish to be identified by sea-going scientists.  We know so little about the oceans – in fact we are so ignorant of the sea that we don’t even know what we don’t know (to paraphrase the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld).  So two scientists on these new reefs at Cape Vidal have identified two new fish species.  Dennis King and Mike Fraser have the singular honour of having a tiger angelfish and a goatfish, respectively, named after them.  Forty-six species of fish have already been identified on the wrecks, including lion-fish, emperor snapper, silver-streak goldies, algae, shells, nudibranchs and crabs. The entire dive world is waiting breathlessly for the word that they can go out and explore these two new reefs.  Who knows, with such an incentive (as well as a calm day and good viz), I’m almost tempted to put the wetsuit back on again.