Kingdom of Knuffel

I don't like to be in water if it's murky and I can't see what's in it.

Water doesn't bother me, but crowds do. Those I feel like I'm drowning in and like I can't escape from.

Ugh I'm afraid of the water too. Except I can't swim. Just knowing that the ocean is deep frightens me... but I do like watching sea creatures though lol Just that sometimes when they show the water too I freak out a little.

I've always been drawn to water. I love it, and usually when it comes to landscapes I think the most beautiful to look at are ones with lakes and rivers or the ocean, or snow. I love cold frozen landscapes with frozen lakes or glaciers.

I'm actually doing my masters degree in marine biology, so I'm enamored with sea creatures and oceanography. I hope to one day work with whales, but right now I work with fish.

I'm also a highly trained SCUBA diver. I've been trained to do deep dives, night dives, drift dives, wreck dives, and more. I'm also a rescue diver, so I've been trained to handle underwater and above water emergencies that come with diving. It's an extreme sport, but I actually find it quite calming because it's also a very slow sport. When I have the chance I'd like to go for my Dive Master's, and go further into the technical side of diving to become more specialized. One thing I've always wanted to learn how to do is called ice diving, when you're scuba diving under the ice and you're swimming through frozen caverns. usually this kind of diving would be done in places like the Antarctic, which happens to be a place where it is my goal to someday work in to do research.

Sometimes I feel like a real dare devil because this stuff doesn't scare me, I just want to keep going and see how much I can learn.

Hmm~ I had a similar case as a kid! A kid who needed to stay in the shallows tried socializing with me but I wanted to go in the deep end and they followed. This pool has a steep slope and they crossed it unknowingly, unable to float. What they did do was grab onto me and try to "float" using me. I was just a kid though and, while I could handle myself, I couldn't carry another of my size. So- I was held under as well. We were the only two in the pool at the time and no one was around. It wouldn't be until someone came outdoors to grab a hotdog that they would see I was under and jumped in to grab me. This person thought the other was purposely trying to drown me and got me out first. When they realized the other couldn't swim, they went back in for them too.
This doesn't effect my love of the water though XD I still want to go swimming whenever I can, lol. I admit I don't get much experience in the salt waters of the oceans, but I have in freshwater. Fishies, murkiness or depths don't bother me. Caverns maybe? Only because I'm not experienced enough to scuba or hold onto breath for long enough to feel I could safely do so :3 Pools, water rides and waterslides absolutely.

edit: Also- I regularly spent days in this pool as we knew the owners well. From day to night, rarely leaving for food or bathroom breaks XD so they trusted I knew my limits in the water. The difference was that this other person was new to the pool and wasn't supposed to be in there without a jacket, according to her sister.

I really enjoy swimming, but my anxieties make it hard for me to actually swim in water over waist height. I watched a ton of nature documentary as a kid, so first I was just afraid of pool filter holes - they were the perfect size for eels. Then I saw a doc about various flat fish that would disguise themselves as the ground... then one on venomous fish that would hide under the sand and stab fish...
Closest I ever got to drowning was at a water park, took a water slide and just fell to the bottom and couldn't stay at the surface, lifeguard was watching but literally didn't care... managed to get out by continually bouncing off the bottom until I got to the shallows. It made me not trust lifeguards anymore lol.

@Bramblelegs: Ice diving sounds amazingly beautiful

Water scares me. I had a cousin that held me under water to the point where i almost drowned. I was 6 and she was 14. I know how to swim now, and I'm alright if I'm in the shallow end of the pool, nothing higher than 4 ft. I can't swim in lakes, or ponds or the ocean or anything like that. And I won't go on a boat just in case it sinks while I'm on it.

I'm not scared of the water, but I'd much rather go to a pool than any natural body of water. No sand, no fish, no seaweed, etc.