Frances Leung
My name is not Nemo. Nevertheless, the meaning of it, the fictitious characters of the same name have found me in this photo book; a journal of my diving since 1997.
I come from a family of fish hawkers in Hong Kong – once an array of uninhabited islets. In my child days, my parents befriended the Tankas (sometimes referred to as sea gypsies), and lived on the harvest from this rich sea. I didn’t come to learn diving until my late youth, and strangely enough, I have never dived in Hong Kong waters, despite the coastal locality. So far, I have done almost 200 dives here and there. I have picked 9 places to say about where I went, and what I saw. Word has it that Maldives is sinking, and the corals in the Philippines waters are dying. I’d better pen them down before my memory disappeared.
Most of the memorable dives occasioned during 1997-2002. My mother passed away in 1996, and my homeland Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. Are those incidences related?
Notes: Nemo in Finding Nemo – Animation movie, Captain Nemo in 1000 Leagues below the Sea – Jules Verne, Nemo in Bleak House – Charles Dickens.
Not Too Deep series…next
Image: Frances Leung
