SUMMER MEMORIES:'I HARDLY EVER go on traditional holidays. Instead I tend to go to extraordinary places to work and take overlapping holidays. I'm a big scuba diver. I learned to dive in the Galapagos when I was 38. I was a late starter but now have about 500 hours under my belt.
“To be eye to eye with a manta ray or sea lion is very primal, extraordinary and thrilling. Every diver wants to see a whale shark but the reality is that you could miss it while looking at a tiny shrimp.
“My last proper dive holiday was in Australia. I had been working on an opera in Melbourne and earned money so I could go diving. While on a ‘live-aboard’ boat I got to explore the wreck of the SS Yongala, which is located in Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The dive was incredible. There were yellow sea snakes, grouper the size of Volkswagens and giant ray feeding in the light of my torch.
“I also travelled to Antarctica with a friend aboard a small Russian boat. I was hoping to see giant jellyfish but Antarctica is all about the ice. It was like the surface of the moon, new ice pockmarked by old ice, blue ice and black ice. The different colours of blue were incredible. In the water you see penguins and hear whales. Initially I was quite afraid of the cold. Your face goes numb immediately. It wasn’t painful but took a while to prickle back.
“I also spent time in Tahiti diving. The island itself is destroyed by tourism but the Rangiroa Lagoon was an incredible underwater place. I recall seeing huge manta rays above my head.
“The most remote place I have ever been to is New Ireland off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Culturally it is unspoilt and up to recently they still used shell money. It is not a tourist destination. A friend of mine told me about their practice of shark calling. I spent two weeks there filming with Conor Horgan and during that time took part in the life of the place. We’d wash our dishes in the stream and could hear the islanders singing as they called the sharks coming off the reefs. As a woman I was allowed to shark hunt with a caller named Sealan Kerasimble only after I had washed my body before dawn with jungle leaves.
“Ireland also has a wealth of great places to dive. When I’m at home in Connemara I dive with Scuba Dive West.”
In conversation with Alanna Gallagher
