Mexico’s underground rivers

Moments later, free of the halocline, I marvelled at the primordial stalagmites and stalactites before we reversed direction, following our safety line toward a patch of pure jade-coloured light at the mouth of the cavern. Here, elegant lilies climbed toward the light shafts that penetrated the surface and the gnarled roots of old trees hung down like underwater branches. That’s when I saw the unmistakable silhouette of an owl.

I was in the surreal world of Lia Barrett. A photo editor at underwater photography magazine Dive Photo Guide, Barrett has spent plenty of time in exotic dive meccas such as Thailand’s Similan Islands and Indonesia’s Komodo and Raja Ampat Islands. But last year, she shifted her viewfinder away from Technicolor reef creatures, in favour of featuring free divers. Their athletic elegance, their courage to hold their breath long past sanity and their ability to dive deeper than those on tanks inspired her. Soon she was convincing competitive free divers to dress in civilian clothes and pose for underwater teatime portraits, while her assistants chummed the water with fish parts to lure massive reef sharks into frame. The result was a magnificent surrealist shoot in Roatan, Honduras, that went viral in August 2013. This October, it was time for a follow up, and she abandoned the sea to focus on the cenotes, a network of more than 3,000 pools that serve as entry points into the Yucatan’s underwater rivers.