Week 29: 'A quiet night'

Wonder spawned in: 2010
Wondered into being by: Sulbin and the BBC's Natural History Unit
Wonderspan: Just hold your breath
To experience this wonder at its best: Click 'full screen' and make sure you can hear the sound.

After last week's hexagonally branching, ever-increasing wonder, this week's is as short as you can hold your breath for, or rather as long as Sulbin, a Southeast Asian Bajau diver, can, which I think will be rather longer:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otuf-kG-0Qw
  

The Bajau divers are historically nomadic and used to live on board their boats.  They are now very poor, mostly displaced to Malaysia.  Those who still dive will beg from passing ferries; tourists throw coins in the sea and the Bajau go to find them on the bed.  The wealthier passenger will have done far less to earn a coin he or she doesn't need, than the Bajau does to retrieve it for his family, but at least in the water he commands his world.  Through that gloamy landscape he walks and flies in slow motion, participating alongside all the other life down there, belonging.

Extra...

Sulbin's grace under water reminded me of REM's Nightswimming video with its curiously poignant, beautifully filmed underwater scenes:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahJ6Kh8klM4

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