Personal reflections
THE NEUROTIC SNORKELER
Leslie Carol Roberts
is a writer, full professor, and interdisciplinary educator whose research and pedagogy position design writing, narrative, and creative practice as critical methodologies for examining climate change and its psychological, ethical, and affective dimensions. Her work draws on environmental humanities, affect theory, and autoethnography, with particular attention to embodied perception, ecological anxiety, and human–nonhuman relations. She is President of the Northern California Fulbright Association board and has developed interdisciplinary research initiatives and graduate and undergraduate curricula in design writing at the intersection of humanities, design, and emerging technologies. As a Fulbright Fellow in Aotearoa/New Zealand, she conducted early research in Antarctic humanities at Gateway Antarctica, contributing to scholarship on extreme environments as epistemological sites. She is the author of The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica and co-founder of ECOPOESIS, a cross-disciplinary forum using narrative and design thinking to address climate anxiety. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa and teaches at California College of the Arts and San José State University.
Abstract
The Neurotic Snorkeler is a hybrid essay that combines autoethnography, environmental humanities, and affect theory to examine how embodied anxiety mediates contemporary encounters with “eco-tourism” under conditions of climate crisis. Through a first-person account of a whale shark snorkeling excursion in the Maldives, the text stages neurotic perception not as pathology but as a form of heightened ecological attunement—an awareness of vulnerability, scale, and ethical disturbance produced by proximity to nonhuman life. The essay juxtaposes procedural description, memory, speculative thought, and cultural critique to interrogate tourism economies, extractive logics, and the aesthetics of environmental encounter, situating the human subject as both observer and invasive presence. By framing fear, hesitation, and bodily overwhelm as epistemological tools, the work argues that neurotic consciousness registers climate change not abstractly but somatically, as atmosphere, breath, and imbalance. Ultimately, the essay proposes neurotic sensitivity as a critical mode for understanding the psychic dimensions of ecological collapse, where intimacy with the more-than-human world produces neither transcendence nor mastery, but an enduring, unsettled awareness carried back into everyday life.
Keywords: the neurotic snorkeler, autoethnography, The Maldives, climate change, The Whale Shark, eco-tourism
The Maldives is an island nation in the Indian Ocean made up of 22 coral atolls and many, many islands. These atolls were savaged by the 2004 tsunami. Only nine of the islands escaped damage. The Maldives are home to many, many resorts of varying levels of luxury, catering these days to tourists from China, the Middle East, and Europe. It is considered a paradise for divers and snorkelers because of the vibrant reef ecologies. Wait, let’s pause there. While divers and snorkelers still flock to the Maldives, they now swim in a phantom ecology. The corals suffered a 60 percent die-off due to a spike in sea temperatures in 2016. Some is recovering, some not. Humans are working to devise ways to help the coral, building metal frames to support and nurture corals. I went to the Maldives to write about ecological projects to support corals and remediate sea level rise (the entire nation is at sea level.) We were a team of scientists, architects, and Maldivean dive boat operators. We stayed on an island where there was no tourism industry, a place where 500 people lived and worked. It is a haunted paradise, where the rising seas lick at your toes at beach-side cafes and where the ghostly taupe, dead coral await you when you jump into the water.
1.
To snorkel: To place a plastic mask on the head, secured with a strap, mask covering eyes and nose, breathing tube attached to strap, soft mouthpiece clenched in teeth, suck in through nose to secure and seal mask on face; breath in and out through mouth. Keep tube above water level to allow air flow.
And so we begin.
2.
The boat is called Goma, “beautiful lady” in Maldivian, and she is a fiberglass diving boat, made long and flat, purpose-built for carrying divers, 20 or more I am told, so the boat is more of a floating platform, lined with space for air tanks. There is a roof on the dive platform and narrow stairs to the roof deck, where you can sit and take it all in. There are no handrails, no ladders off the side of the boat. In that, it looks and feels like a large version of a bathtub toy. This is the first glimmer of a feeling: This boat does not seem terribly safe for humans, with nothing to hang on to if the seas are rough. And that roof deck! Exhilarating to climb up there, up the tiny stairs but then, there you are. If you walk on the roof deck, it seems likely you could easily take a bad step and fall unnoticed into the Indian Ocean.
The air tanks below provoke some anxiety, too. I am not, the Neurotic Snorkeler tells herself, going to start thinking about the tanks. (But there was that unfortunate incident in the pool in Hawaii, where you did the one-day dive certification in the resort pool and you were hung-over and then you realized how loud the air coming from the tank sounded when you were immersed in the pool. And the only other student was a mustached child psychiatrist from New York City and he stared at you like you were crazy when you asked about the bends and how sick the canned air might make you. And then you panicked in the pool and barely got to the edge of the pool, ripping off the mask and calling out to no one in particular, I hate this.
So. This is just the beginning of the fear.
Fig.1: Jumpie. The drawing is by Dane Lachuisa, NYC.
3.
Is the word “neurotic” the right word for all these thoughts or is it “sensitive” or even a term, “ecologically aware?” Or is it simply being cognizant of the vibe of a place? To sense in finer grain the Earth Vibe? To be attuned to how your own breathing feels?
To be hardened to the Earth Vibe, some call those humans grounded or of sound mind and body. What does that mean? To be of the stoic soil? Why do we imbue soil with such qualities? Soil is packed with bacterium and other living things. If you fall dead, all of these things will eat your body.
Perhaps the land and seas and air are neurotic, too, maybe that is what weather is.
Maybe this is why climate change feels the way it feels. Perhaps this is why those of us who are neurotic feel climate change very differently than those of us who are stoic, grounded, even skeptical that the biosphere is changing and will take us all down. That our cycle of life has come to an end. Like the coral’s cycle does, every 13 years. But we are not going to start thinking about the dead coral. Not yet.
4.
I can see the coral through the clear and pale water. I walk to the beach with my plastic rig, pull it all on. I wade in with the others and we swim towards the opening in the atoll, where we can get a little outside and see the reef in action. The water is calm. The water is indescribably beautiful. I have never seen living coral so as we reach the atoll, its ecru or taupe appearance, this monoculture of beige, takes on a sort of sculptural beauty. Then I remember one of the scientists said, And it’s all dead. I kick my flippers around the shallow water at the atoll’s edge. The fish really offer this gorgeous and ridiculous moment. You see they have not caught up to the new environmental hue so their electric pinks and yellows remind me of some ecstatically dressed drag performer walking down the avenue, en route to a show. They are unmoved by my presence and I float in the calm, shallow water. A group of narrow silver fish overtakes me and I stop moving and just feel their presence. About 12 feet beneath me, a shark emerges from a coral overhang. It is about eight feet long. Hard to tell with the water and distance but big enough to create a panic signal around my clavicle. It is proximate and one of the biologists points to it and gives me the thumbs up. Now the question is: How fast can I get out of the water.
5.
In the water! Get ready!
Jumpie, jumpie, jumpie.
Jump.
Today we swim in the open ocean. We are here, in the Indian Ocean, astride one of the many many atolls, to meet up with the Whale Shark. Before a couple weeks ago, you had never heard of the Whale Shark. In fact, most people have not heard of them.
The Whale Shark: The first thing you need to figure out is this, What sort of name is that? Is it a whale (peaceful and calm) or a shark (teeth and tearing). Why give it such a stupid portmanteau name -- that’s not a science name! That’s an eight-year-old kid name drawing a fictive creature!
One of the marine biologists (she has her tank on and wet suit and is adjusting straps and nozzles) is getting ready to jump in -- she mentioned that the Whale Shark is in fact a shark without teeth and she gave you a look like, that’s pretty basic information I cannot believe you do not know this. Aren’t you a journalist?
So. It sieves its food in the same way some whales do. Primer given by the boat captain: The Whale Shark is shy and will try to swim back to the dark depths that it prefers if we swim too close. The Whale Shark is mysterious. Not a lot is known about what it does most of the time. What we do know is that the Whale Shark makes appearances around the Maldives and that hotels encourage people to put on snorkels, get on boats, and go pay it a visit. It is considered a real treat to swim with the Whale Shark.
6.
On this day, the Indian Ocean is dark navy blue in some places and palest azure in others. It is stunning. It is also a real ocean and there are swells and the land is within sight but not close at hand. There would be no swimming to some sandy bit of atoll should there be an emergency, for instance, if you drift too far from the boat, get tired and want to stop this. No. You will be in the open ocean.
7.
Before you jumpie, you make an inquiry about personal flotation devices. You always wear one when you kayak or river raft or swim in the open ocean. However, the skipper informs you that this needed to be ordered in advance. There are no PFDs on the boat. The other snorkelers are looking at you, and you realize that they are fine with the jumpie without a PFD. Are they all insane? Is this not a dangerous idea, this jumpie jumpie into swells to peer down at the Whale Shark? Before you can get on top of this fear, more speed boats arrive packed with tourists. They have seen your boat slow and they know you have spotted the Whale Shark. They will soon be disgorging more snorkelers, these other eight boats, and the water will become a churning mass of bodies and snorkels, heaving along, looking for the Whale Shark.
8.
While all of this is happening in your head, you lean over the side and look down and you see the Whale Shark. It is pale beige with spots, moves slowly, and it is enormous. How large? More long and more wide than expected with a definite shark vibe. Is it the size of a Honda Accord? Maybe as wide in some places and much longer. How would you describe it to people who are not here? Could you say it would fit into a one-bedroom apartment if it was an open-plan living and dining room? That it could fill an entire Olympic-size pool? Or could you say, maybe look it up on YouTube because it is less the size and shape and more how the Whale Shark moves. It moves with the science fiction slowness of a master predator, teeth or no teeth. The sort of apex predator that does not need to be hurrying for anyone because everything else is below it on the food chain.
Fig. 2: Look down blue. The drawing is by Dane Lachuisa, NYC.
9.
There is a Whale Shark in the ocean astride us and we are all being told to jump into its space, stay two meters away from it, and experience “proximate swimming.” Twenty-seven hours ago, I had never even heard of the Whale Shark.
10.
Get ready!
Jumpie jumpie jumpie
I can still see the Whale Shark hanging around off the starboard side. It is visible through the clear, azure seas. I am seeing it through the most beautiful, perfect lens, me in my airy world, the Whale Shark in his watery world. As it should be. Everything here should come between us.
What if the Whale Shark were to invent a water-snorkel, hop out of the sea, and come and see us in our backyards or on our terraces? Would we like that? No. We would call it invasive and we would kill it.
11.
There are now nine boats of tourists, speed boats, cushy boats with hand rails and cushioned seats and stairs down to the water. They are emblazoned with the names of swanky hotels that line these atolls, strangely unappealing lines of cottages on stilts, some with weird hammocks and private pools on their decks. The architecture is generally bland.
All these tourists wear snorkels and PFDs. But the snorkels are different: They are single, large plastic screens that cover the entire face, stretching back on the head and then the breathing tube sits up high, like an antenna. This is very distracting. Would this be a better way to see? But then your whole face is covered with this bowl of plastic. So it is more like being an astronaut, an underwater astronaut. They are also being directed to jump in.
Yelled at to jump in.
They all comply, arms and legs thrashing in the swells, tangled together, a weird dance of bodies afloat.
There are heavy-set men in tiny stretchy bathing suits and gold chains and gray-hairy chests. There are skinny kids. There are very toned and tanned women in bikinis. They are entwined, like plastic you have seen floating at a nearby beach, weird forms and all stuck together. A strange new plastic snorkel island.
12.
Feelings are processes not objects.
13.
Someone shares this on WhatsApp ...Holding infinity in the palm of your hand, as the poet says, may not be about how a flower or a grain of sand go on forever, or have causes and conditions that go on forever, but again a radical uncountable quality. Otherwise it’s not really a flower or a grain of sand—those are just terms in a series that continues on and on…
I write back to this that I have recently heard from a former Marine Corps officer that the US keeps a huge bladder, the size of a large lake, under a Hawaiian Island.
...the image of hidden chemical powers in your message is very disturbing! I heard a story about an early 70s computer that translated “out of sight, out of mind” as “invisible idiot.” …
I use WhatsApp when I am overseas because it is free. My older son, when I tell him to use it to reach me while I am abroad, says, hahahaha. Double encrypted! You know who else loves WhatsApp? Terrorists! When he says this, it changes how I feel about its bright green presence on my phone screen.
14.
What is the psychic effect, all these humans thrashing in swells? You think about this question, staring at the sea, the wide sky, and then the man who works on the boat who has a map of the Maldives tattooed down his spine. The effect is a human aquarium. As though this is some Whale Shark designed Sea World, where they come to see us thrashing around, for a little entertainment before they vanish back to their dark, cold, benthic world.
Fig. 3: Boats surround. The drawing is by Dane Lachuisa, NYC.
15.
I jump in and start swimming as the back-tattoo fellow waves to me. I immediately regret this decision. I am in the Maldives on a local dive boat without fancy steps to climb back aboard. I begin to consider how foolish this is. I think about a movie, a movie I did not see, about a couple of divers who were left to die in the open ocean. I don’t know why they were left, presumably lost and unaccounted for until -- too late!
I think about the three men on our boat, who are watching and when I wave, they smile and wave back. I have seen them swim. They are good swimmers and some are certified divers. But what if they get distracted? What if they are certain that I am a confident open-ocean swimmer and begin to focus on other things? And I think about other sorts of sharks because there are a lot of them in the Maldives, where they are protected. Will the thrashing humans summon the sharks?
16.
I quickly fall behind the others. The ocean current and wind make the sea a roiling maze. (When I later look at photos, it will seem less evil.) But I get a feeling, a vibe, an instinct: I need to get back to the boat. My mask is not as perfectly sealed as I might like. Salt water starts to seep in. I stop and tread water, pulling the mask up and dumping water out. But once this action is taken, it means the seal is harder to recreate -- harder to get my long hair out of the silicone that allows me to inhale through my nose and pull the seal tight. And the swells are pushing me in the wrong direction.
I swim toward the boat, mask in place, strong crawl. Then I stop and look up and raise my right arm, the old, hey, I am coming in for a landing. They do not see me for a few beats and I panic.
Then I start to swim harder and can really hear my breath and when I stop again, I see that they are now aware of my anxiety and they are slowing, idling not far at all. Then I am at the back of the boat and wondering if there is a chance the inboard engines will cut my legs off. But they tell me to turn around and grab me under the armpits and pull me out.
Once on the boat, I have a triumphant sensation. Narrow escape from death! Then I look out at the dozens of people happily kicking and snorkeling in a weird cluster. I think about the idea of “eco-tourism” and I think about the Whale Shark and how we are these festering invaders. It feels like a microcosm of Climate Change. How we as a species showed up 300,000 years ago with our little fires and stone tools.
17.
The Whale Shark is little understood. I talk to a marine biologist from the UK. He explains how the Whale Shark has been little studied and what they do know is that the sharks we see are most likely young males, eight to nine years old. The females mature more quickly and swim away. No one knows where they go. The young males spend most of their time in deeper water but sharks don’t have the ability to generate body heat (who knew?) so they have to come to warmer surface water to take the chill off, before they dive back down. It is when they come up to these shallow waters that they engage with humans. The humans often get too close and then the Whale Sharks need to go back down, before they are warm. When I think about the 50 thrashing snorkelers and the Whale Shark that swims so placidly by, moving its long sharky tale with a particular cadence, I hate eco-tourism. Look at a video, I think. Go to one of the grotesque aquariums where they live in captivity. Look at reef fish, those lemon yellow and electric blue forms that thrill and dazzle, particularly against the strange taupe of the dead coral. The marine biologist I meet has been in the Maldives for decades and sits on a Maldivian government panel that tries to make rules of engagement for tourists and divers around the 22 atolls and many many coral islands that make up the Maldives. But the issue is consensus around access, as he puts it. All the resorts want to offer ecotourism and there are many, many resorts because that is how the Maldives, with no arable land or other things to sell to the world market, is able to have an economy. They sell experiences. By the time I meet him, I have been in a small plane from one atoll to another and I have seen how the coral atoll ecosystem is designed. It is like nothing I have seen on Earth. The shades of blue range from azure to deep navy. And the white rings of sand and corals. And there is not a hill or elevation in sight. It is all flat and equal to the ocean.
18.
As we get closer to Male, the capital, someone points out the islands that are being “remediated” -- the ones where white sand is being dumped onto uninhabited islands to make them higher. One of them clearly has lengths of piping -- water and sewage -- lined up across, waiting to be installed. The pipes are there to service a new resort, a new Hard Rock Cafe resort. On this plane, a plane rather too loud as planes go, which makes one wonder if there might be something wrong with the plane and who actually is working on the ground crew for servicing this tiny airline at that hot, dusty airstrip where you boarded? How well are they trained? An airport with no water or other things for sale, just a room with louvered windows -- waiting to sit in a seat on this small plane, run by an airline which charges Maldivians one-quarter what they charge tourists?
On this plane, looking down at the stretch of islands, a voice comes to mind, a voice with some gravitas, reminding that the Book of Revelation instantiated particular religion ideas about the Dominion of Man and that all other species were below us and that we would rule -- well, really not all of us, really the white men, the people with penises AND to further narrow the field, those who prefer to put said penises into vaginas -- would rule the rest of us, the woman, the non-binary human, the Whale Shark, the coral, the sand. And when this person, or type, had run through all of the Earth’s “natural resources” then it would be time for them to actually start planning how to flee to the heavens.
19.
Wait: What? What was it you heard on the BBC, the night you had the really bad jet lag? That there were Silicon Valley types investing billions in one-way exploratory trips to Mars? And that thousands of people had tried to sign up? One way trips to Mars? Sitting in a seat like this one, waiting to die?
20.
Now wait a minute, should I be panicking about the End of Man, the mass extinction, the sixth of its kind or should I be welcoming it? Should I be happy all of those people are getting on rockets for Mars: More room for the Ecological Beings who stay behind. Will all of us perish, the tuna-fish, the kittens, the ponies, the dogwood tree, the humans? Or will some version of us all make it, finally free from the oppression of industrial capitalism and corporate farming and enforced slave labor to fuel global trade? Free from the earth-metals mineral pickers you saw in that disturbing documentary about women in China harvesting said minerals from cell phones in run-down cottages in the middle of nowheresville?
21.
When it is time to pack the snorkel and fly home, a plane ride with a carbon footprint equivalent to a whole year of living as a Maldivian, you carefully fold the bathing suits, tuck the reef-safe sunscreen (although your lawyer friend who works for a deeply evil chemical company said the science about all of that sunscreen safety is “complete bullshit”) into the single plastic bag you are allowed (terrorist fears making the world more green!) and you listen to a physicist talk about reality on the television. He wants to do an experiment with the Hadron Particle Collider in Switzerland to see whether reality is all a simulation. If it fails, the whole world could be destroyed.
Well, that’s already happened, you say aloud to no one except the sunscreen. And as you say it, you look at your hand, your freshly chewed fingernails, your three bracelets, two of St Jude, your “main man” he of the “lost causes” and your black volcanic rock bracelet. You stretch out your fingers and wonder for a moment if this is all simulated. If it is, you think, how does that change anything? Then you think about all the simulations tucked into this world that might be tricks to help us not feel simulated, like interviews with physicists about how a simulation might be unearthed.
22.
Sitting in the airport in Male, surrounded by things to buy to remember the Maldives, such as key chains and small dishes hand painted with the words Maldives. Many of them feature renditions of the Whale Shark but it is impossibly tiny and often is given an eery cuteness that does not in the least reflect the experience of the actual Whale Shark. There are American food chains in the airport and then there are food chains that have copied the American food chain aesthetic so they are all bright colored, illuminated plastic menus offering things in bowls and wraps. As though this was some great contribution, these culinary offerings, and needed to spread like malaria across the globe.
But something inside you has shifted, with this close encounter with those corals, those beige corals. It is a psychic shift. The neurotic part of the brain is trying to get accustomed to a new feeling of calm. It’s over, the neurotic voice says. It is not a simulation or weather map or words about glacial collapse or pictures of weirdly huge fires burning the Arctic. This is what the world will look like when it ends. And you have been there and you are there.
Then it is time to get on a plane and this phantom ecology is settling firmly into your chest cavity and spreading to your shoulders and fingers and down your legs. You realize it is in you. Because.
It is coming home with you and will live with you forever.
The Neurotic Snorkeler
Suggested citation note
Roberts, L.C. (2026). The neurotic snorkeler. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 7 (1). [open access internet journal]. – URL: http://ecopoiesis.ru (d/m/y)