One of the greatest weeks of my life was back in 2003, when my family went on vacation to Hawaii. We went because the previous year, my sister, Andrea, and I became certified divers, so this was our reward from our parents, who loved diving. My sister and I were only fourteen at the time. We had always heard that some of the greatest dive sites and clearest water in the world were in Hawaii and were extremely excited to experience it for ourselves. Our routine that week was: get up first thing in the morning to go diving and then relax on the beach for the rest of the day. Nothing could beat spending your days like that. On the day of our first dive, I was quite nervous because this was going to be my first actual dive in the ocean. When it came time to get ready to jump off the boat, I was feeling excitement, but at the same time extremely scared that something was going to go wrong. I jumped in, and immediately began scrambling to make sure everything was alright. Once I finally got down to the reef, I was anything but scared. The reef was like its own underwater city; everything was so alive. The vibrant corals waving through the current, the schools of fish swimming around like they were performing some sort of dance, and the occasional turtle or ray that sparked …show more content…
The research team went off and did there thing, so I was left to my own to explore. The moment I got down the reef my heart sank. Everything was just white and lifeless, the complete opposite of what I had seen before. The underwater city that used to be there was gone, instead it was like a massive ghost town. All the colorful corals that once blew my mind away were dead. All the fish that were swimming around like they were performing some sort of dance were gone. It was one of the saddest things I had ever seen. A whole flourishing ecosystem was wiped from existence, just because humanity couldn’t take care of our precious