The first time I saw her, I was peaking around the bottom of a massive coral stone as the evening light danced around me in hues of orange, pink, and red. Submerged in only 4 meters of ocean at a dive spot called Tolo, I was using the last of my tank pressure trying to capture the sunset as it painted the reef and sand below me. My computer gave me ten minutes to play, and I was enjoying just hanging upside down in the current, letting the ocean push and pull me around the stone like a tour guide driving me past the sites.

The waves stopped me briefly near a small shallow crevice, and I seized the moment to turn one of my strobes and see if anyone called it home. To my surprise, two large eyes speckled like the night sky shown back at me. They belonged to a large female Porcupine Pufferfish, Diodon holocanthus, or ‘Two-toothed wholly thorned’.

 

     Her football-shaped body was striped in rich browns and tans with dark freckles dappling him all over. Like a soldier at parade rest, her spines lay against her skin with ease, but always at the ready. Calm curiosity was the emotion her Mona Lisa smile conveyed. I breathed slowly, deeply, and intentionally so as not to startle her with my bubbles. Our shared gaze became an entire conversation, the galaxy in her eyes glowing like the milky way...

 

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