But how glad I am for that first crappy dive! How grateful I am to have begun my underwater life in such a dark abyss, because every dive since my Midwestern youth has been remarkably better—better visibility, better water temperature, and far more exciting. How grateful I am for my hard-ass instructor back in Ohio, who would be fairly upset with me now, as I struggle to set up my own dive gear: Which side do I place the regulator before screwing it into my tank valve? How many psi in a bar? Yes, I have logged a hundred dives, no five hundred, no more, probably—I stopped counting because, why count? Oh, I am a lazy diver, too, coddled by years of resort dives with ready gear, though today my dive buddy is patient and show me my errors while fixing them, clipping and unclipping, unscrewing and retightening. Then she motions for me to leap off the pier.

This is the magic of Montserrat—that you can leap from the island’s largest pier and splash down into a world of soft crystalline blue. Descending, I watch the pier’s rough stone wall come alive with starfish, sea urchins and moss. A few wandering yellowtails guide me away from the manmade structure and into the immediate watery wilderness.

Twenty years have passed since the eruption of Soufrière Hills, the still-smoking volcano that buried the former capital and left two-thirds of Montserrat a no-go zone. No doubt, the death and destruction was catastrophic, but now there is so much life underwater. Right here, below the rippled turquoise and anchored boats, the coral is beautiful and alive. The fish are unbothered, lazy in the afternoon, showing no fear of my looming shadow as I approach. There are octopus and sharp-nosed moray eels—there are huge stingrays and fat conch, busy hermit crabs and . . . grouper! Tons of grouper—dozens of good-sized rock hind—the sure sign of a healthy reef. Nobody’s fishing this reef to fill restaurant plates.

As I glide down to a depth of 30 feet, I float past giant columns of pink and yellow pipe organ sponges that stand taller than me. Rare and endangered barrel sponges sit with mouths agape, a testament of nature growing silently. All around, purple sea fans and neon brain coral have taken root, ready to spread across the ashy seafloor and fill the grey with color.

This is what nature does when left alone to flourish. This is twenty years without cruise ships or high-rise hotels or mass tourism, twenty years with just a tenth of the previous population, twenty years without significant pollution, and twenty years of recovery. Over the past twenty years, I have watched the fish and coral disappear from other Caribbean hotspots, islands that were loved too much by those who were too unaware to notice.

But here, amidst the staggering blue of Montserrat, the reef is exploding with life, recovering fast from the old volcano and urging me onward to explore deeper and look closely at every squirmy, punk rock nudibranch or the creepy sea spider slinking away from me. And so I glide on, content to spend this hour down on this cheery patch of reef until it is time to return to my world on the surface.

Unlike most of my dives, in Montserrat I merely climb a ladder up from the bay and onto the pier. Slowly I roll out of my equipment and peel away my wetsuit. I let the saltwater drip from my hair and nostrils—the afternoon sun dries my skin.

“That was a great dive,” I say out loud, to nobody in particular. It was a great dive, and frankly, it’s been awhile. Frankly, it’s been too long since I’ve seen life like that down here in the Caribbean.

An hour underwater has shown me the truth about what I saw this morning—that the island is alive and well, that Montserrat has something special on its shore. I want to shout it to the world, and yet I don’t want to tell a soul. I want Montserrat to remain a well-kept secret from anything or anyone who might take from the good of this island. I want Montserrat to stay tranquil and clean and teeming with sea life. Most of all, I want the reef to survive, and I pray that it will.