Dropping down into a teeming coral reef feels like landing on another planet. The texture and topography of the underwater landscape, the quality of light, the rhythms of movement and the muted colours, everything differs from the world of air. Since gravity is unimportant here, other forces determine the development of forms. What seems outlandish or whimsical at first glance, on closer study reveals hidden logic.

I find I need to draw something to really understand it. Most of the time I wouldn't say the results of doing so while diving actually qualify as drawings, so much as a record of visual investigation, though that sounds like the definition of drawing. I use a non-wood pencil (made from recycled plastic cups) and Aquascribe notebooks with plastic pages.

After diving, I work up the notes into sketches and paintings. In contrast to most underwater photography, with its focus on the individual, what concerns me is the beauty of the interconnected totality of these places, and of the underlying order and processes that generate them. Originally, this stemmed from a desire to find ways of enriching our urban environment. But, as it becomes clear that the reefs will disappear in my lifetime, the work also begins to take on the character of a documentary record.