Caro Santamaria

I grew up in Medellín, Colombia - as landlocked as the country gets. The ocean was not something I knew, it was something I invented. As a child I had the Ocean Friends Barbie and Baby Keiko set, the little orca from Free Willy, and I staged elaborate underwater scenes in the paddling pool. That was as close as I got for a long time.

I did not learn to swim until I was almost thirty. There was no pool in our building beyond the inflatable one in the patio, and my family did not swim. The first time I tried to dive, I still barely knew how to. I was a non-swimmer with a regulator in my mouth, several metres beneath the surface, in a country whose two oceans I had never properly been in. It did not come naturally. It was uncomfortable, slightly terrifying, and nothing like the version I had rehearsed in my head. I went back anyway. And then again. Somewhere in those early, clumsy dives, something clicked, and the ocean stopped being a fantasy and became the place I was most at home.

That was over 700 dives ago. Since then I have earned my PADI Divemaster certification and freediving credentials, shot underwater photography across four continents, and built a life that keeps finding its way back beneath the surface. Colombia's Caribbean coast and Malpelo, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Maldives. Every place has taught me something different about how to move, how to look, how to stay still long enough that the fish stop noticing you. It is also where I found nudibranchs, the sea slugs most divers swim straight past. I cannot. They are extraordinary, and chasing them has become its own obsession.

This site is where I write about all of it - scuba diving destinations, dive gear, ocean conservation, and what it has meant to come to the ocean late and never want to leave. If any of it connects with you, get in touch.