It was the second day of diving, and I'll remember it for the rest of my life. Not necessarily just because of how beautiful he was, but because I stared right at him for a several moments and never saw him. The divemaster had stopped and began pointing toward a large frond of sea grass. I looked right where the divemaster was indicating, but in my inexperience, I missed him completely.

Then, as I watched others swim up to the same place I had just been looking, I knew I was missing something very important. So I went back, looked very hard for a moment, and realized that I had missed something so small and so delicate that once I saw him, I could simply have stayed there and watched him for hours. He was so entrancing that I could only half-wittedly snap a few pictures -- none of which came out.

I almost felt as if taking pictures at that moment was just a distraction. I didn't want to do anything but watch him float from one piece of sea grass to another, grasping at those fronds with such grace it almost seemed as if he was casually indifferent to the very camouflage that protected him. While half of me wishes I had gotten a photograph of him, my other half is still secretly glad that I didn't waste too much time worrying about a photograph.

That time was best spent just watching.

And while I watched this small, delicate seahorse – the first I had ever seen in the wild – I recognized how he put me to shame with his elegance. I can't move with that much grace on land, much less underwater, and especially not with all this gear on. It was a truly beautiful and humbling experience.

As the week progressed, that little seahorse became, in many ways, the perfect analogy for the entire island of Curaçao: Blink and you might miss it. But if you're paying attention and start exploring, you'll find an experience of incredible and humbling value. Rent a car and take that dusty side road you noticed a little while ago. Ask a local where to go. Study the map you purchased at the airport instead of keeping it around just in case you get lost.

You may have heard the phrase, "God is in the details." It was about the only thing I could think of as I explored the island of Curaçao. Now, admittedly, I am not an experienced diver, but I could never even have imagined what I would experience as I dove to 40 feet at the Santa Cruz dive site the first morning I took the dive boat from Sunset Waters Resort.

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It was exciting. It was overwhelming. It was underwater culture shock. And it gave me a feeling that I strangely crave so much: The feeling of being small and insignificant. The feeling that I was now face to face with something so much more important and so much bigger than myself. The feeling that motivates me, like so many of us, to seek out adventure in the wild areas of the world.

People who are motivated to explore the world crave this sensation in one form or another. They look for places where their soul feels at home, where their will can be tested and, most of all, where they gain perspective on where they belong in this universe. For me, those places are usually cold and mountainous, but this time, as a 30th birthday present from my father, I unknowingly found this same perspective in the warm waters of Curaçao.

While a trip to the mountains in the Denali range of Alaska may boldly suggest omnipresence through sheer size and magnitude, a trip to Curaçao overwhelms any explorer in a different way. It makes you feel very small, not because the place itself is so big, but because of the sheer magnitude of the small, easily overlooked miracles that cover and contain the entire island – the animals, the people, the geography – as well as the beauty that inhabits the underwater realm. You are one of the biggest individual forms of life on the reef, and yet you feel so small, not because you are dwarfed by some glacier-ridden mountain, but because you are really a true minority in this place.

The ocean swims by, regardless of my existence. Without me, all of this would still continue as it does – and will after I'm gone. For me, it's the same feeling I get when I backpack and climb in the mountains. Ed Viesturs, a famous high-altitude climber, likens an assault on the summit of Everest to "tiptoeing" to the top quietly, hoping that the mountain will allow you to get there. As I floated silently, only my bubbles betraying my existence, I watched the life of the reef and was impressed with the privilege of being there. It was similar to the feeling I get when I'm backpacking or climbing.

A sense of being allowed to be in a place that could, very easily, not let me be there.

We often go through life feeling like we are the sole owners of the world, when in reality, we are privileged to be here. And it is places like the mountains, or Curaçao, that allow us to look at our lives realistically. The amount of life that passes you by on the reef will not only awe you with the variety and sheer magnitude of the ocean, but it will, as it did me, put you in your place.

It's really all about perspective.

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The first thing you will see is magnificent and unknowable numbers of creatures gliding over and around and through the coral formations that cover the ocean floor. Like snowflakes in a storm, they all look the same from a distance.

But look closer, and before they disappear, you begin to see the divine patterns and individual shapes of each one.

It is then that you begin to identify individual creatures such as spotted drum, pigfish, French angelfish, eels – the list goes on and on. As I got closer, I began to recognize that there were more and more things hiding under the sponges or the coral outcropping along the edge of the reef's cliff. Here was where I found Curaçao – and only by looking for it.

It is in this way that Curaçao becomes an island that you can enjoy discovering. Unlike many destinations in our world, Curaçao doesn't immediately hit you in the face with its true beauty. It reveals itself as you explore and begin looking at the details hidden in the island. Taken from afar, the life of Curaçao is impressive – and numerous. But to see the divine, to experience creation at its most delicate and surprising and to truly realize who you are in relation to all this, you must begin to explore and seek out the details in this small island.

We began our trip by getting hopelessly lost on the island, and a 30-minute trip from the airport to Sunset Waters Beach Resort ended up taking two hours. The resort is located on the southern side of the island, along a very small, remote and hilly road shooting off one of the only two roads that run from the west end of the island to the east. Being that there are only two roads within a couple of miles from each other, I'm not sure how we managed to get lost, but we did. I think it mostly had to do with the absolute darkness we encountered while driving. At night in Curaçao, you may sense that on one side of the car is 100 feet of rock cliff, but you can't see it. The absence of streetlights, while somewhat disconcerting to an American driver, is also very refreshing. The night was completely dark, the stars were visible, and the landscape was completely hidden to us as we fumbled our way to the resort that evening.

Waking up the next morning, I walked to the sliding glass doors that overlook the cliff our resort building stood upon. I had been able to feel the cliff and hear the water beneath the balcony as I looked out from my room the night before, but the morning revealed the beautiful turquoise waters I had been expecting as well as the porous cliffs that rise above the beach and surround the bay that Sunset Waters is next to. From a certain angle I could also see the very tip of Mount Christoffel, the volcano in the center of the eastern portion of island, poking into the sky just a few miles away. Slightly numbed by the difference of this place from my native upstate New York, I began to get ready for the day, nervous with anticipation.

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We were incredibly busy as we prepared for the first dive of the day. Getting all my gear together for a dive like this was a wild experience. I hadn't been scuba diving in over 10 years – a quick refresher course back in New York, and now I was here, trying to keep my mind on not just my camera gear, but the stuff that was going to allow me to breathe underwater. To top it all off, I started to get a migraine – something I unfortunately get from time to time, without rhyme or reason. I swore that I wouldn't let it keep me from diving in this beautiful place. As I jumped into the warm water and descended to the reef for the first dive, the headache simply went away.

The lack of noise and the sensation of the water around me put me in a place of complete contradiction – a place where I felt sensory deprivation, but at the same time overwhelmed and over-stimulated. The pressure of the water on my body was welcomed, and the pain in my head disappeared.

I was simultaneously completely aware of myself and completely distracted by the world around me.

After a minute or two of adjustment, I began to truly look at my surroundings – not just to see, but to explore. It was at this point that I experienced the divine for the first time in Curaçao. It was at this moment that I realized how little and inconsequential I was. And yet I also realized how much privilege and power I had, just in being there. Again, I was in a place of complete contradiction.

I was struck by how amazing the technology that I was wearing is, and at the same time I was impressed with the amazing power of the ocean and the life that inhabits it. The regulator that stretched from my neck to my mouth, an amazing miracle all by itself, was really only a rudimentary tool by which I was able to float below the surface and witness an infinite and elegant miracle spread out all around me. Again, I had to realize that I was inevitably and powerfully impressed with my own very small position in this world.

Shaking off my awe-induced paralysis, I began taking photographs and exploring this cosmos that I had jumped into. The joy soon came not just from being underwater, but from discovering underwater. I was finding life, in all of its smallest and most amazing forms. I was becoming an active participant in the bustle of life on the reef. I began to feel that I almost belonged there myself. And then, all too soon, I realized that my gauges were telling me that my air wouldn't last forever and I needed to head back up to the surface.

Unlike nature, man's miracles never seem to last long enough.

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The second dive site was very different from our first one. At first I could only have hoped that every site would be so different from the previous, but that is what ended up being the truth. And so it was all week long: Each site had its own piece of the infinite, but taken at a quick glance, each place looked almost the same. The beauty of these places is that once you realize that you have to look at the smallest of things to reveal that beauty, you begin to learn how the ocean works. You start to understand the simple causes and effects of life on the reef and can witness it, detail by detail.

I quickly realized how little I knew about this place. I wish it had happened faster, but in my own desire to explore this place myself, I had held back the questions that were forming in my head. Eventually, I began listening to my fellow divers and the divemasters. They could tell me more in one 10-minute conversation thanI could possibly hope to learn from a whole marine biology textbook. This was especially true for the divemasters – they lived this, they knew it on a daily basis. I learned that I could accelerate my discovery of the unknown by simply asking them where to find things in the undersea world. I learned where to find the easily missed creatures, such as crab shrimp, and even the elusive seahorse. Any explorer needs them sometimes, and they became my guides.

It was because of these guides that I saw that amazing and humbling seahorse – the first and only one I have ever seen in the wild.

After three immensely enjoyable days diving more amazing reef sites with Sunset Waters, we began moving down the beach toward more populated areas of the island. We dove one afternoon with the resort Habitat Curaçao and had dinner at the resort, watching the sun set over the dive boat. That night, we drove down to the capital of Curaçao, Willemstad, and began the last half of our week by checking into the Breezes resort.

Breezes was a completely different experience from Sunset Waters or Habitat. Far more commercial, there were always shows in the evening, including limbo dancers bending themselves under a pole of fire, acrobatic displays and dancing and music until midnight. It was strange to make the transition from quiet, star-filled evenings at Sunset Waters or Habitat to the bustle of people and the activity of the night life in Willemstad. But at the same time, there were more people to interact with. There were more activities to fill the time with. And it was all within the resort itself, not even considering all the things you could do by traveling out into the city.

I have to say, though, that my personality mixed best with the Sunset Waters environment. But what else would be expected of a man whose idea of relaxation includes carrying a 60-pound pack, eating freeze-dried food and not coming in contact with any electronic devices or other conveniences of modern life for a week or more?

The next dive shop we teamed up with, Ocean Encounters, took us to the spectacular wreck of the Superior Producer our first morning in Willemstad. Being new at diving a wreck, I was immediately impressed at how eerie it was. The Superior Producer sits with its keel at around 120 feet, and the boathouse rests at approximately 80 feet. At first I was disappointed, because it seemed to me as if this wreck went completely against everything I had come to believe about diving in Curaçao. But I should have known better: As I began to get close to the wreck, a world of new life and resurrection came into view. From the death and rust of this vessel a new and amazing ecosystem had been born. The coral covered the ship, breaking up its smooth, sterile lines, and the fish swam through the broken boathouse as if it had always been theirs. After a while, I couldn't even look at it as a ship – it had become another part of the coral reef.

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Just as I said before: The miracles of man and his technology are short-lived, but nature's miracles conquer and endure.

After the Superior Producer, the divemaster, Remy Barby, decided that for our surface interval we were going to investigate the ruins of Fort Beekenburg, a beautiful, remote fort that was built in the early 1700s. We climbed up stairs and hiked along a path that was hundreds of years old, passing through wooden gates that couldn't keep anyone out anymore. As I sat atop the walls of the fort, looking out over our dive boat, I realized that here I was, again, in a place that was not easily found or noticed. It was special – even magical – because we felt as if we had discovered it. We had taken the road less traveled, if you will, and found and explored a piece of Curaçao that we would not have found if we hadn't gone to the effort.

After the surface interval, we prepared to dive one last time during our trip to Curaçao. The tugboat at Saba is in 20 feet of water near a coral reef; it looked strangely eerie at first. But as I got closer, its metal outline and smooth curves disappeared and were replaced, and it became another jagged piece of life on the coral reef. Just as the entire island had been, things were not as they seemed at first glance. I dove closer and followed a French angelfish under the bow, looking up at all the life that had given this wreck a new purpose.

It was a beautiful dive – indeed, my favorite of all the dives that week, teeming with all kinds of creatures in the shallows and even more life waiting to be found just over the drop-off. But I stayed above 50 feet for almost the entire dive, entranced by the beauty of the wreck that had become a playground for the life of the ocean. I was rewarded for all of my efforts and exploration with the knowledge that I gotten a glimpse of something bigger than myself. Something infinite, something divine. Something that was that much sweeter because I knew it was because I had purposefully decided to find the details that enriched the experience for me.

Even in a bustling city such as Willemstad, there are things you can only find with a little effort. With our own efforts (and thanks to our knowledgeable guide, er, editor in chief), we found ourselves at a place called Equus, a restaurant and bar where skewers of meat are hung in front of you and you stuff your face – voraciously – without the need for such cumbersome items like silverware or plates. I'll never forget that evening – or that restaurant.

A bit more effort and we found Tu Tu Tango, a nightclub hidden behind a movie theater. That evening, local DJ Paco spun the turntables and mixed the tunes, while people danced and drank, all in the shadow of a huge movie house.

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But it's not just nightlife in Willemstad that begs to be found: There is a great deal of history on this small island. From ancient forts and ministry buildings to the oldest Jewish synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, Willemstad holds many things for the traveler who is willing to take the time and look and learn. Ask strangers questions. Consider yourself privileged to be here and don't just sit on the beach; soak in the whole place, not just the sun.

Asking a local was how we found a hidden beach on the north shore, Playa Kanoa. Nestled in amongst the cliffs, this rocky beach is only a few miles north of Willemstad, at the end of a dirt road that runs along an industrial park. This is one of the only places on Curaçao where there are waves you can surf. Also a great place to windsurf, the beach has pools of water where many families waded, and then rougher areas where surfers braved the coral and wind-whipped waves to catch a ride. It wasn't much effort to get there – just some questions and a 40-minute drive – but I know that many visitors to the island never go there.

It was also by a little effort that we found a small farm/zoo called San Pedro Springs, where they have monkeys, birds and other livestock. For a small amount of money they opened a gate for us and allowed us to explore the beach nearby. Feeling a bit like a World Rally Cross team, bouncing around in our Japanese-made rental car (with about two inches of ground clearance), we explored this dirt road along the north shore of Curaçao until we came upon a huge bank of windmills.

Dwarfed by these hundred-foot structures we stood at the edge of a beachless shore. The waves splashed up the sides of the cliffs magnificently, and again, the wonders of Curaçao came alive as I explored the minute details of the sharp lava shores.

That is where I found millions of small white snail shells hidden in the cracks and crevices. That is where I found the ocean-bleached vertebrae of some animal along the edge of the cliffs. That is where I found the ancient imprints of coral left in the volcanic rock. It is where I saw the details of the infinite – details that were pieces in a puzzle that add up to be a sum much greater than the value of the whole. A handprint that shows me how small and inconsequential, and yet how fortunate I really was to be there. Then, as I looked up and saw the way the shadows from the cliff face fell on the tumult below, I remembered that seahorse, and that true beauty is never seen unless you stop and look for it.

Luckily for us, nature's miracles always last much longer than anything man can attempt.

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On Location: Shooting for Sport Diver Magazine

How I relearned everything I already knew but forgot about photographing on location.

(Not in any particular order)

1) A photographer's pictures are better the more comfortable he feels in the environment. If the photographer hasn't been in an environment (like underwater) at all, or in a very long time, it will take time to be able to focus on the photographs (as opposed to just focusing on survival). 2) Always take notes. No matter where you are or how rushed you feel, take – no, make the time to take notes. 3) Always have a Sharpie pen with you to label your film rolls as they come out of the camera. Dive sites can often look the same later on, so how will you know where the picture was taken unless you know when that roll of film was shot? 4) Never trust local developers. Only take your film to people you know and trust. You can replace your camera. You can replace your memories. You can't replace your film. (Anyway, it's too hard to hide the bodies of the people who screw up your film in a place you don't know very well.) 5) Always test your equipment and be familiar with its quirks. The worse the environment for your equipment (like at 90 feet in salt water, or at the summit in February), the more important this is. Even professionals who use their equipment constantly always have to keep a close eye on their equipment and watch for problems. And even professionals oftentimes have problems with their equipment – so if they do, then everyone else is guaranteed to! 6) Always, always, always keep your underwater camera's O-rings clean. (You naturally would think, "duh" – but I flooded a perfectly good Nikonos by being stupid this way.) 7) Get a map of the general area(s) where you are shooting. Sleep with it under your pillow. Learning by osmosis may not be completely debunked. In other words, know your area well, and know where you want to go shooting. If you see something cool but don't have time to stop at that moment, mark it down on your map and go back later to get a shot of it. 8) Always, always use a tripod (when above the surface) when photographing – especially for those coffee-fueled sunrise photos where you can't stop hand-shake-induced blurring even at 1/2000th of a second. 9) Never use your only land camera in an underwater housing for your dive photos. Flood one and you loose both. 10) Consequently, always have a second underwater body lying around in case you flood a camera. Something relatively cheap, like a good old Nikonos, is perfect for the job (and with the 35 mm lens, it can also double as a secondary land camera). 11) Shoot a lot at sunrise and sunset. There's no light like it, and it changes very quickly, so be ready – especially at sunrise, if for no other reason than the fact that a lot of people aren't crazy enough to get up that early for photographs. (It always feels good to be up that early and know you got the jump on everyone else, especially as you walk into breakfast and they ask you where you were. "Out photographing," you tell them with a sly smile – making them wonder what they missed!) 12) If you're really worried about the amount of money you're going to spend in film and processing, then check out the latest line of Digital SLRs. They'll pay for themselves in a couple of trips, and the quality of the images has finally gotten to the point where there really isn't much of an argument left for film (especially considering the cost!). I've used the cheaper Canon EOS Digital Rebel a lot over the last year, and I have to say I'm hooked! 13) If you are shooting digital, bring a laptop and download your images as often as you can. Also bring a small stack of DVDs and burn a backup copy of the image files nightly. It takes about 10 minutes, and it's totally worth it. 14) Shoot, shoot and shoot some more. The only good photographers I've ever known were the ones who weren't afraid of making a mistake and capturing it on film. If you get one awesome shot for every 30, you're doing very, very well.

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David Weisbrod resides in Rochester, New York. Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology and holds a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Photographic Communication and a Master of Science in Teaching in Art Education. He has worked as a high-school art teacher in Penfield Central School District for 6.5 years, teaching photography, computer graphics, digital video production, sculpture and jewelry. Married for 6.5 years to his beautiful wife, Nadine, of Rochester, Minnesota, his passions include his two boys, Isaac and Elliot, photography, his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, educating people in the arts and backpacking. More examples of his work can be found at www.oxygenprocess.com.