Mike Bernhardt

Editor • Poet • Travel Writer

March 23, 2020

Diving Raja Ampat

Bluntsnout Scorpionfish

All around me was an utterly alien landscape. I tried to slow my breath, to be still, to float as quietly as I could. A forest of soft, beige coral swayed gently in the bluish-green light. A perfectly camouflaged pygmy seahorse, only 1/2-inch long, clung to an enormous fan coral with its tail. …