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Once upon a time, writer and freediver Helen Walne was scared of the ocean. Then she took the plunge, and discovered the magical world of kelp forests just off the shore of her Cape Town home.
The 'underwonder', as she calls it, not only helped her to heal from a devastating personal loss, but her astonishing photographs of the kelp and its creatures inspire thousands to respect and protect this precious ocean ecosystem.
Helen Walne had every reason not to go back in the water.
When she was six she had a near drowning experience in her hometown, Durban. She was swept out by a rip current and grated on the mussel-studded pier; her injuries were bad enough to land her in hospital and left her terrified of the ocean.
“My dad would take me out to the breakers to swim when I was a teenager and I used to get this absolute panic in my chest, like I'm-going-to-die terrible anxiety.” She chose the safety of swimming pools over the sea.
Then in 2007 her brother Richard took his own life, drowning off the coast of Cape Town.
“After Richard died I went a bit mad. He loved the water, and I decided to ‘pull myself toward myself’ and started swimming.”
She decided it was time to brave the ocean and joined a weekly Camps Bay swimming group called the ‘Hot Chocolate Swimming Club’. Camps Bay water is notoriously cold. “But this was way before cold water swimming became trendy. It's like shocking yourself back to yourself in some way.”
Waves still scared her, but as her confidence grew Helen entered some open-water races. “I was always pretty much at the back but it didn't matter. I just inserted myself into this whole other community that I didn't even know existed.”
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During those training swims, she often found herself lingering around a specific little patch of kelp. “It wasn't much but it was magnificent the way the light would come through and there were little fish and it was just the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
The wheels fell off, she says, when she started taking her husband Brandon's action camera with her. “I realised that what I actually wanted to do was slow down and look at the kelp. I wanted to learn about it and I wanted to be in it. I didn't want to be swimming as a sport,” she says. “I guess I just wanted to regain some joy, because I was still really heartbroken. And if you are in the water you don't really think about much else.”
Helen turned that newfound joy into wonder and delight for her Instagram followers by documenting what she saw during her daily tidal pool swims. “I like to call what I do ‘snorkelling and looking for pennies’. Basically, like when you're a kid. I move incredibly slowly.
I'M NOT INTERESTED IN GOING THROUGH CAVES. I'M NOT INTERESTED IN USING THE SPACE. I'M INTERESTED IN BEING IN THE SPACE.
She recognises that many people are intimidated by kelp forests. “A lot of people say they're too scared to do it, or they don't know what to do. I feel like every time I dive down it's to get treasure and show it to people. I love the fact that, through my photographs, they're able to experience it.” She also dives to experience her own altered state – “a combination of the cold but also the visual extravagance.”
Helen is constantly amazed at how everything works together in the kelp forest ecosystem. “The kelp basically buffers you from the big ocean, so it's a nursery for little baby fish and shrimp, down to the tiniest nudibranchs to whelks to different kinds of snails. Everything is fascinating when you slow down enough and really look.”
Initially, Helen had no idea what she was doing with her camera. “I couldn't even see what picture I was taking –the camera didn't have a screen at the back. It was all just about the light.”
By ‘just pointing’ her camera Helen captured a magical world of ‘sherbet-hued noble corals, toucan-red algaes and flowing capes of kelp'. Not to mention the psychedelic impossibility of her favourite nudibranchs – so much more than your average mollusc.
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Helen makes these otherworldly creatures accessible through genius captions, pairing the visual splendour of her pictures with the everyday absurd.
I'M NOT INTERESTED IN GOING THROUGH CAVES. I'M NOT INTERESTED IN USING THE SPACE. I'M INTERESTED IN BEING IN THE SPACE.
You won't regret setting an hour aside to visit @helen_walne. Beyond being entertaining, Helen's posts are an educational treasure trove of facts about fascinating creatures and the dangers that threaten their fragile ecosystem.
But she didn't start with an Insta strategy. “I'd see an octopus, and I would be immediately like, ‘Oh my god, Douglas!’ you know? I think it's also a way a way for me to work through the modern world, as well as to make it relatable to people. We often just don't say the stuff that we all think.” She admits that she sometimes worries about the anthropomorphising – “reducing these poor creatures to these hideous human things.” But at the same time, she wanted to provide some relief.
“SO IT'S TIED IN WITH PEOPLE AND THE CREATURES AND THE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN. AND BASICALLY EXPOSING THE ABSURDITY OF US, WHILE EXPLORING THE BEAUTY OF THEM, AND HOW WE ARE ALL TOGETHER IN SOME WAY.”
She also admits to getting more serious of late. “I've actually been quite worried about the sea recently, and I can't make a joke of it. I see it in trouble.”
POINT OF NO RETURN
The second time Helen nearly drowned was in her early diving days. She decided to take a post-swim detour and visit a prime snorkelling spot she'd heard about. She had a new weight belt she'd just bought to help her “look at things properly”.
She didn't know that the bay in question was the same one in which her brother had drowned.
“I'd avoided looking at that stretch of coastline for two years. I couldn't even look at it driving past in the car. I wanted nothing to do with it. But somehow I was being drawn by something, to go there with my belt that had double the weight I should have had on it.”
She was tired, the sea was rough, and the narrow gully entrance to the bay was tricky at the best of times. The tide turned, the swell picked up, and the weight belt kept pulling her under. “I basically had a panic attack,” she remembers. “I got smashed on the rocks and eventually I started screaming for help.” Luckily there were other divers on the scene to pull her out.
When Helen wrote a book about her relationship with her brother and the tragedy of his death, she called it The Diving (Penguin Random House) – but she was only drawn to freediving after he was gone.
When Helen wrote a book about her relationship with her brother and the tragedy of his death, she called it The Diving (Penguin Random House) – but she was only drawn to freediving after he was gone.
After her own near drowning she signed up for a freediving course.
She also bought a better camera, and became a stalwart of Cape Town's ocean conservation community - a bunch of “science and nature geeks” showing that the power of amateur citizen scientists can make a difference.
She scripted The Blue Blanket, a beautiful animated ode to the sea and its link to our ancestors. The short film was used in the campaign against seismic drilling in South Africa, which took on oil giant Shell and sent it packing.
She was also part of a campaign to stop the City of Cape Town from using chemicals to ‘clean’ its tidal pools; their walkways are now kept algae-free with high-pressure spray that prevents them from becoming a slip risk, but doesn't poison the sea life below. Find out more at Cape Town Tidal Pools.
These days Helen says she's obsessed with “this beautiful algae that is so red it's like rubies. It's crazy. It just glows in the light and it's just magnificent.”
Long may her obsession, and her sharing, continue.
WHY KELP FORESTS MATTER
The kelp forest off South Africa's Southern Cape coast is part of the ‘Great African Sea Forest’ - so named by the Sea Change Project founder Craig Foster, who introduced it to the world through his Oscar Award winning My Octopus Teacher. The only forest of giant bamboo kelp on our planet, this abundant and diverse ecosystem fringes the shores of Cape Town's two oceans – Indian and Atlantic – and stretches more than 1000km up the west coast into neighbouring Namibia.
The Lewis Pugh Foundation would like to thank Helen Walne for the use of her magical photographs.
PHOTOS Ⓒ HELEN WALNE
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The Lewis Pugh Foundation is a registered charity in England & Wales.
Charity Registration no. 1168977.
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