Listen to the story:
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”
– W.H. Auden
Gentle waves rock my six-year-old body back and forth in the Dominican Republic’s crystal blue waters. My fingers stretch around my dad’s arm, anchoring me while I adore the rainbow-coloured fish and corals below the surface.
My dad had brought me on a snorkelling excursion where he was assured I would get a life vest. I never got one, but my dad gave me the thumbs up, and we jumped in anyway.
The big blue felt sacred, endless. It contained life I never knew existed. Although I knew I was experiencing something special, I didn’t realize how important it was, or that I would spend a part of my adult life trying to preserve it.
While growing up in Winnipeg, clean water ran freely through the taps of our Transcona suburban home — a load of laundry would be going at the same time my mum ran a bath for my sister and me. I drank from the garden hose without hesitation.
By the time I was six, I knew some places — like the Dominican Republic — didn’t have the same access to clean water. But I didn’t know the problem wasn’t just happening in other countries, it was happening in communities just hours away from my childhood home.
After living in Honduras, Indonesia, and Thailand during my twenties, I was no stranger to water advisories. Since returning to Canada at the end of 2019, clean drinking water runs through my kitchen faucet, yet many First Nations communities in Manitoba still don’t have access to that basic human right.
As a child, my privilege was lost on me; as an adult, I’m working to better understand.
One of those communities was Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, which straddles the border of Manitoba and Ontario and has supplied Winnipeggers with clean water since 1919, yet the residents of Shoal Lake 40 didn’t have access to clean drinking water for more than two decades.
It was only after receiving national media attention that Shoal Lake 40’s water crisis became well-known.
In 2021, the advisory was lifted after a new $33 million water treatment facility opened, and residents could finally drink a glass of clean tap water.
Shoal Lake 40 faced one of the longest boil-water advisories in Canada. Neskantaga First Nation in Ontario, roughly 450 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, holds the record — 28 years. This advisory is still in effect.
The United Nations says access to water and sanitation are human rights, even though so many people live without them.
Many other Canadian communities still face this injustice. There are 33 long-term drinking water advisories in 29 communities across Canada. Three of these are in Manitoba: Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, Shamattawa First Nation, and Tataskweyak Cree Nation.
The list of communities facing this grievance continues to fluctuate. The Government of Canada even has an interactive map to track the status of water advisories, as access to clean drinking water remains Canada’s largest water crisis.
In 2012, my travel partner, Rachael, and I were travelling to Koh Phangan, the second stop in the string of three islands in the Gulf of Thailand. As the boat chugged along, people choked on diesel fumes, worsening their symptoms of seasickness. A woman sat down next to me and started showing me a leaflet with vibrant photos of coral reefs, exotic marine animals, and scuba divers.
She said every day of scuba diving comes with free accommodation. With one look — the “why not” look, as Rachael and I called it — we found ourselves in the back of a pickup truck pulling into Big Blue Diving Koh Tao, Thailand.
After two full days of practicing skills in the pool, I was shuffling like a crab to the boat’s edge. My left hand was holding onto my weight belt, and my right hand was holding my mask and regulator. With my equipment secured, I took a giant stride into the open ocean.
The salty sea felt rejuvenating after the Thai sun had beaten down on my black neoprene wetsuit and heavy equipment. Once our group entered the water, seven heads bobbed about like the buoy we were circling. Hand over fist, we started pulling ourselves down the mooring line that was anchored to the bottom of the ocean floor and was meant to guide divers to the right spot.
With each breath I took, bubbles belched from my regulator exhaust. My ears kept popping, signalling I was getting closer to the bottom. After the bubbles cleared and my salt-stung eyes adjusted, coral and fish surrounded me.
During that first dive, I saw a clownfish defending its home, trying to battle with me. It charged at my mask and retreated to the anemone, only to pop out again, just like Finding Nemo. I swore my mask strap could have read “P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.”
By the fourth dive, I had encountered rainbow coloured parrot fish that looked hand-painted and sea turtles that soared through the water like birds in flight. I even followed a black and white striped sea snake (banded sea krait), which my instructor later informed me is venomous.
But nothing prepared me for what I was about to see during my third dive in my Open Water Diver certification. There I was, suspended in the blue abyss, when a 12-metre whale shark casually passed by, like a celebrity saying hello, not realizing their fame. I remember feeling insignificant in that moment. I don’t remember how long the encounter was. It might have been brief, but it felt like time stood still.
While this sight was so majestic it paralyzed me in the water, I was equally fascinated by coral reefs. They resemble the intricate streets of New York City — only locals could navigate them with ease, and the blue abyss mirrored a vast countryside.
While I was discovering this fascinating underwater world, my instructor, Emma, talked about the destruction of the ocean, the amount of garbage dumped in waterways, and the harmful fishing practices, like longline or trawling. She told us how some sunscreens are toxic and talked about how the reefs that took millions of years to form took only years to disintegrate. She stressed how we needed to control our limbs while diving, one wrong fin kick could snap a sea fan, causing it to roll away like a tumbleweed.
How could something so beautiful, so complex, so diverse, also be so fragile?
After four days, I went from being a non-diver to realizing I wanted everyone to experience the underwater world as I did. Because maybe then, if people witnessed the magic below the surface and understood just how fragile of an ecosystem it is, they would advocate for its survival.
After that, I was determined to help. I decided the best way to do that was to make the ocean my office and become a dive instructor.
In 2017, I completed my instructor course in Honduras and two years later, I found myself living in Gili Trawangan, Indonesia — a small island an hour off the coast of Bali. Every morning at 6 a.m., my alarm would wake me up to start my day. Scrambling, I would tie up my bikini straps, wiggle into jean shorts, and throw on an oversized shirt — this was my work uniform.
I would ride my bicycle barefoot down a dirt path through a forest of palm trees. Occasionally, I would encounter a local traffic jam — a family of cows — blocking my exit to the beach.
After navigating the ruts, bumps, and wildlife, I would arrive at work — Lutwala Dive and Bungalows (Lutwala). My dream came true. The ocean was my office.
One morning, my manager scheduled me to guide fun divers (a group of certified divers that need a local guide to show them around an unfamiliar dive site). After a pre-dive safety check, my group somersaulted backward into the ocean like Navy SEALs on a mission.
Descending a wall of coral, we stopped at a depth of 50 feet. We hovered as a mild current carried us along the mile-long dive site, but there was a stillness — almost as if we were watching a movie. The current pulled at the dive wall like a roll of film. We stayed suspended while we watched the changing sea wall and all its critters.
We were nearing our maximum dive time of 40 minutes, so we started shallowing up when I noticed a turtle. It was a usual sight for me, but I wanted to make sure the other divers saw it too. With one hand on top of the other, I closed my fingers, creating a giant fist, my two thumbs stuck out on either side, rotating in a circular motion, the underwater hand signal notifying divers a turtle is nearby.
But as we got closer, something seemed wrong. This guy was inexplicitly still. As my group and I closed in, I noticed the problem — fishing line. It had wrapped itself around the hard shell and arms, trapping the turtle to the coral reef. The twine was everywhere.
I looked at my students, checking to see if everyone was OK. They signalled they were, but I saw their eyes wide with sorrow. There was no way the turtle would escape the restraints of the thin clear wire. With my right hand, I reached across my body and released my dive knife from its holder. After every cut, I remember the turtle growing restless, thinking it was free. Once I cut all the strands, the normally slow-moving animal soared at 45 degrees toward the surface until it was out of sight.
We were still for a moment, waiting for the boat to pick us up. But then one guest said, “I filmed the whole thing on my GoPro,” in a tone both sombre and excited.
The video captures one story, but this is not an isolated incident.
The Nature Conservancy said more than 100 million pounds of plastic from industrial fishing gear pollute the oceans annually, threatening marine life. Researchers’ initial analysis focused on industrial fisheries vessels that stayed at sea for weeks or months at a time, only addressing fishing gear that was lost during use.
The research did not include small fishing vessels that remained close to shore like the ones lining the Gili Trawangan shoreline.
Later, with a beer in hand, we debriefed the dive and what we saw.
I don’t remember everything about that conversation, but a few comments and questions echo in my mind.
We just banned plastic bags at the supermarket.
Should we eat fish as scuba divers?
You know most makeup and pet food have shark by-products in them.
The conversation had multiple threads, but underneath we were all asking the same question — how do our actions impact our oceans, lakes, and rivers?
Once I moved home from Utila, Honduras in 2018, I started working at Diver City SCUBA & Travel. It’s a Winnipeg dive shop that runs dive courses out of West Hawk Lake, which is 90 minutes east of the city, close to the Ontario border.
Diving in West Hawk Lake isn’t for the faint-hearted. When the water first hits your face, it takes your breath away. It feels like someone just gave you a facewash with snow, and as you descend down granite walls, the green tinge to the water grows darker. The sediment dances around you like stars in the night sky. It feels like you are in outer space, but that’s what scuba diving is like, exploring a new planet. This wasn’t Thailand, Indonesia, and Honduras, where crystal clear waters and corals engulfed me. This was West Hawk Lake, where discarded beer cans made up much of the scenery. The local dive shop hosts Dive Against Debris events to help mitigate this problem. The owner talked about making art installations with the trash, but I am not sure if it happened.
But it’s happening in other parts of Canada. In 2021, Sea to Sky Arts Councils Alliance, Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans, and Return-It started Diving In: The Art of Cleaning Lakes and Oceans, an environmental art campaign.
“It’s exciting, and it’s fun because it’s kind of like treasure hunting. But it’s also really sad,” said Amy Liebenberg, one of the project’s organizers.
Liebenberg noticed when people see divers, especially ones pulling things out of the water, they’re always inclined to come over to say hello and ask questions.
“A lot of people felt called to help,” Liebenberg said. “You know, as we’re pulling shopping carts and fishing traps, and bags and bags of cans, and paddles and all kinds of stuff [out of the lakes and the ocean].”
The organization conducts cleanups underwater and on the beach in seven communities: Pemberton, Whistler, Squamish, Lions Bay, Bowen Island, North Vancouver, and West Vancouver.
“A lot of people who would come and just pick up a can or two, and then we had some passersby who would stay,” Liebenberg said. “By the end of it…they were committed to coming out to other cleanups.”
She said the intention of the project was to create a conversation where people felt empowered.
“What I wanted to do when I started this project was not create a sense of dread,” Liebenberg said. “There’s a lot of that going on and a lot of good organizations doing the whole dread thing creating startling statistics and shocking and scaring people.”
But Liebenberg says this project should inspire people to feel like change is possible. There is no conservation act too small, she said. The key to advocating is finding the right community that make sense for the individual.
“It’s you creating your own campaign,” Liebenberg said. “We did things in our way because we were arts counsellors and organizers and scuba divers, and so this was the natural outcome of the infusion of those particular skill sets and groups.”
We talked about how there are advocacy groups all helping in different ways, but it is a team effort, and everyone should do their part.
“The blue planet does not belong to corporations. It does not belong to the government. That belongs to all of us, and belonging comes with responsibility,” Liebenberg said. “We have to steward these wild spaces.”
“We have to think about the future of these spaces as their own entities but also for our own survival. For our children and grandchildren, it’s our job.”
At the beginning of each dive, the pockets of my diving vest would be empty, and when I got back on the boat, I became Mary Poppins, pulling out beer cans, straws, food wrappers, GoPros, and plastic bags. One time I even got a flip-flop.
Collecting rubbish is a part of almost every dive, and I have completed around 600 of them.
When I returned to Manitoba at the end of 2019, many remote communities still didn’t have access to clean drinking water.
“I don’t even drink the tap water. They say it’s pretty bad. There’s a lot of minerals in it and chlorine,” said Dylan Bercier, a Grade 9 student living in Kinonjeoshtegon First Nation, about 250 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
I was introduced to Bercier through his former science teacher, Wilson Fallorin, now the director of education at Fisher River Board of Education.
In 2021, Bercier was a student in Fallorin’s Grade 8 science class at Lawrence Sinclair Memorial School. As part of their curriculum, he and his classmates studied the water in their community. They would rotate tasks, some testing the water for iron or copper, others for chlorine and the pH balance. Students would collect samples from indoor and outdoor water sources. Once collected, they would compare them to a colour chart for results.
“At first, they’re so enthusiastic about testing their water samples…then they’d say, oh, we’re not drinking this tap water,” Fallorin said. “I really feel bad about that because water is one of the basic necessities to be able to live healthily.”
When I was Dylan’s age, I don’t remember testing the water quality of our tap water. In fact, I remember frequently drinking from the water fountains in my school’s hallways.
“I will always encourage communities, especially the First Nations communities to have this water testing quality integrated into their teaching,” Fallorin said.
“I don’t even drink the tap water. They say it’s pretty bad.”
– Dylan Bercier, Grade 9 student
Testing the water provides students with a better understanding of what is harmful, Fallorin said.
“I thought it was pretty fun. It was nice and easy,” Bercier said. “I haven’t really done science that much, but I just wanted to try something new and get out of my comfort zone.”
Getting out of his comfort zone led him to win first place at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre Schools Science Fair in 2022 for his project Tap Water Quality in Kinonjeoshtegon First Nation.
“The reason why I did it is so that people can be aware of how bad water can be in small communities,” Bercier said. “… Just so that people can feel safe drinking water so that people don’t have to worry about getting sick when they drink the water.”
Bercier and his science partner, Deanna Traverse, collected water samples from their school, the north and south side of the town, and their teachers’ living accommodations.
“I remember that the water was pretty bad north and south side, and there was a lot of minerals inside the water and chlorine,” Bercier said.
The science project opened more doors as it went on to the Canada-Wide Science Fair, where Bercier won the First Nations University of Canada Award, a special award in the junior category.
Looking forward, Bercier said he wants to learn more about water and will continue advocating for access in remote communities.
Another day, another dive in Indonesia.
Turtle City or Turtle Heaven is exactly what it sounds like — a dive site that is both shaped like and filled with turtles. The neck of the massive underwater turtle is a coral bridge that leads to the head — a giant sea mound (a large geologic landform that arises from the ocean’s floor without breaking the surface). A group of turtles, between 10 and 20, gather here. This dive site is sacred and popular. If you are distracted by the mesmerizing sights around you, you are at risk of losing your group. It’s like looking for Waldo but swap the red and white stripes for matching black wetsuits and masks. If you’re lucky, your group leader will wear a flashy bathing suit or coloured fins.
The turtles are not my favourite thing to see. I prefer the octopuses who loves playing hide and seek through the complex coral reefs and concrete dwellings.
Octopuses tend to live alone, and once they settle they don’t like to move. Trying to get them to come out of their home is like getting a 30-year-old friend to go out for drinks after completing their ten-step skincare routine.
But since I dove there almost daily, I knew a few secret spots to look.
I check the first spot and BOOM! I see an eye, which is the easiest way to spot an octopus — they can be tricky to find. I signal to my group. They know to approach cautiously because if they don’t, POOF, they’re gone. We swim over to the next spot — nothing is there— this theme had been trending for the past two weeks.
After the dive, Lutwala’s boat and the other dive operations head to the next location. But after we’re gone, a fleet of local fishing boats replace the dive boats. I can’t help but think about my dear friend, the octopus, who hasn’t been “home” for two weeks.
Where did he go?
After a busy week, my co-workers and I head to the centre of Gili Trawangan. Locals and tourists weave between food stalls serving Indonesian-street food like lumpia (spring rolls) or mie goreng (fried noodles). Among the fried options are endless ice coolers filled with the catch of the day — octopus tentacles catch my eye.
Is it him?
The same marine life swimming past me by day lays dead on the ice at night.
World Wildlife Fund says “catching fish is not inherently bad for the ocean, except for when vessels catch fish faster than stocks can replenish.”
Overfishing can unintentionally kill marine life that was never the intended catch, and by removing vital species from the food-chain, it can be devastating to eco-systems.
Now that I’m back in Winnipeg, life is different. I’m no longer pulling garbage off a reef or freeing sea turtles from their deaths, but it doesn’t mean I can’t advocate. It just looks different.
Water belongs to everyone, connecting humanity. The actions in one area impact another.
For me, there will always be a thrill of getting involved with initiatives that defend the oceans and marine life like Project Hiu, which works with shark fishermen, offering to transition their deadly fishing operations to tourism or joining the notorious Sea Shepard Conservation Society. A crew goes toe-to-toe with commercial-sized illegal fishing boats.
But my home province also needs attention.
My next step is finding my water advocacy allies in Canada working to preserves Earth’s waterways — from Safe Drinking Water Foundation, a Canadian organization tackling access to clean drinking water by supplying water testing kits to classrooms across Canada, including Dylan Bercier’s or Manitoba’s own Lake Winnipeg Foundation and the Samaritans collecting rubbish along the Red River. I see you; I stand with you.
If I don’t, what will be left for future generations?
Feature illustration by Emma Honeybun.
