From the time she was very young, a marine botanist, oceanographer, and conservationist named Sylvia Earle felt drawn to the ocean. As a teen she lived by the crystal clear waters of the Florida coast, and spent her time exploring the plants and animals that lived there.

And then – she just never stopped. After she was grown, she spent her time in the ocean deep – so much time in fact that people started calling her “Her Deepness.”

Maybe she’s even down there right now!  Maybe she’s at the Aquarius Reef Base, an underwater laboratory off the coast of the Florida Keys, to explore the Conch Reef. Let’s go deep with Her Deepness herself, Sylvia Earle.

Now she’s all suited up. She’s got on her black and electric-blue suit, a helmet, a double oxygen tank, and swim-fins on her feet. Sylvia sits with her legs dangling into the moon pool. This is a cut out in the floor that lets the aquanauts enter the ocean.

The water is gently lapping at the edge, beckoning her in.

Sylvia remembers that when SCUBA diving was new, people thought it was too much fun to be scientifically useful. Little did they know how much fun doing science could be. When Sylvia was starting out, people also thought women couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be scientists. But look at her now: she’s a record-breaking, game-changing aquanaut.

Before she dives, Sylvia’s equipment is unwieldy and awkward to maneuver, but that all changes when she drops through the moon pool. Submerged, she moves easily, like it’s second nature. Take a deep breath in with her, Rebels, and imagine floating up in the water, just a little. Breathe out and imagine yourself floating down, ever so slightly. Breathe in again and you’re buoyant, like a balloon bobbing. Pay attention to the rhythm of your breathing, too. Other sounds are muted underwater, but your own breath is the soundtrack of your dive.

Sylvia’s arrival in the water surprises a group of her neighbors, a large school of yellowtail snappers, bluish fish with a lemony yellow stripe down their middle leading to their bright triangular tails. Moving through them is like passing through an underwater cloud. They disperse, leaving her with a view of the outside of her home away from home, the Aquarius Reef Base. The Base allows aquanauts like her to live safely underwater for long periods of time, just like how astronauts live at space stations. Living under the water means the aquanauts can get tons of work done – without having to return to the surface every few hours. And THAT means they can explore more of the ocean.

It is expensive, though; Sylvia and her fellow aquanauts are here on a special six-day mission to persuade new funders to keep the Base running. Although she used to be nervous giving presentations in public, Sylvia’s passion for saving the ocean and the life within it, and now saving the amazing laboratory that helps her study it, makes her brave. She’s confident this mission will succeed. She barely swims an inch before finding a hundred examples of sea life to document. Who wouldn’t be impressed?

Over time, the Base itself has become encrusted with coral and sponges shaped like sunbursts, pompoms, trumpets. Sylvia can almost hear a symphony in their shapes: a lilting flute, the breathy whistle of a woodwind, the steady beat of a drum. The Base is awash in their kaleidoscopic colors: goldenrod, periwinkle, rust. Sylvia catches a silver glint from the corner of her eye and turns to see an enormous, gorgeous fish called a tarpon passing by, shining like a suit of armor.

As Sylvia swims away from the Base, her movements are as fluid as a dolphin’s. The water shifts in shades of blue – cerulean, cobalt, azure.  Sylvia’s conservation organization is called Mission Blue. Climate change, pollution, and overfishing threaten the oceans she loves. To Sylvia, ignorance is part of the problem; she often says that people know more about the moon than the oceans we all depend on. Through Mission Blue, she focuses on hope to inspire people to preserve the world’s marine ecosystems. She wants to invite others into her blue world. Will you join her there?

Imagine, rebels, as you listen to Sylvia’s story, that you’re swimming through the ocean with her, the water stretching out on all sides of you. You are totally immersed, calm, filled with a sense of belonging.

Sylvia feels a deep connection to the plants and animals around her. She often trains her attention on what others might overlook; even the smallest lifeform is important to Sylvia. Years ago, she named a new species of tiny pink algae. It wasn’t that no one had ever seen it before, they just hadn’t taken notice of it like she did.

She’s reminded of that pink algae as she swims past a rose-colored colony of coral. Coral is built by polyps that grow together; even though they look like rocks, fans, or plants, they’re really clusters of living creatures. Some of the forms she sees are ruffled like the frothy lace collar of a fancy dress. Some look like hands, with rounded fingers stretching out in every direction, covered in little nubbly spines. Some look like vegetables – almost like cauliflower, with pale, blush-pink fleurettes. At first it appears that the coral is fluttering, as if in a breeze on land. But at second glance, it isn’t the stationary coral moving but hundreds of tiny fish. The fishes’ scales are peachy, almost blending in with the pinker coral – but not quite. They shimmy their tails and fins as they dance in and out. If their movement had a sound, it would be the shimmering peels of bells.

Sylvia glides toward a breathtaking giant anemone, with chartreuse green stalks topped by brilliant magenta rings of tentacled mouths. Unlike the coral, it is moving. The anemone ripples and rolls.

Rebels, feel yourself swaying, pushed and pulled by the ocean currents, waving in the water like an anemone.

An orange and white striped clown fish that had been hiding inside the anemone emerges and darts away. A smoothly rising shape catches Sylvia’s eye. It is a jellyfish, expanding and contracting to propel itself through the water. It’s translucent and delicate, its tentacles trailing behind it like streamers. They nearly brush over the smooth grey back of a fourteen-foot-long nurse shark. Not to worry, Rebels—Sylvia knows nurse sharks prefer eating shrimp and squid to divers.

Beneath it, a single slipper lobster, with a speckled red shell, hops happily along. Sylvia recognizes a bit of herself in it—independent and joyful on the ocean floor. She lets her eyes travel between the coral, the anemone, the shark, the fish, the lobster. Something Sylvia loves about her work is how one discovery can lead to another to another to another.

It is hours later when Sylvia completes her exploring for the day and finally returns to the Base. She pulls herself back up to the wet porch and strips off her gear. After showering, she gets into warm, cozy pajamas. She looks forward to sharing all of the incredible ocean life she saw today with all the rebels all over the world. From coral to jellyfish, sponges to snappers, she feels both like she’s spent the day with old friends and like she’s learned something new.

Before she’s even halfway through her dinner, a Hawksbill Turtle cruises by. She marvels at the sharp serrated edge of the turtle’s beautiful shell. Hawksbill Turtles are essential for the health of coral, nibbling the sponges and algae that would overgrow the reef if they didn’t clean it out. Its hooded eyes appear sleepy, like it’s ready for bed, and it opens and closes its beak as if in a yawn. Sylvia yawns, too. Just as it’s about to pass the window, it seems to lift its powerful black and yellow spotted flipper in a wave. Sylvia feels like it’s a good sign to end her day waving good night to the sea turtle whose ancestors have swum the world’s oceans for a hundred million years.

She retires to her bed, a narrow bunk stacked three high in the rear of the tin-can-shaped Base. Careful not to bump into her fellow aquanauts, she settles in for the night, her royal blue mattress sighing underneath her. Drifting off to sleep, she dreams of joining her turtle friend to dip, dive, and drift through the water together, the ocean all around them, vast and blue.