About two weeks before Christmas, deep, deep down in the vast, blue ocean near the Islands of Bermuda, my fish friends and I were playfully enjoying some fun in the water.

My best friend, Rocky the rockfish, shouted to me: “Hey Shelley, let’s go for a long swim! I’ll race you around White’s Island!”

“Sure Rocky”, I shouted back. “That sounds like a great idea. And afterwards, let’s go to the Dinghy Club for a snack. There’s always extra food dropped in the water around the boats.”

I raced off ahead of him because I knew I would have trouble keeping up, being a sea turtle and having to carry my big shell around with me.

As we were racing through the water, we saw bright, bright lights coming from above the surface. We were terrified!

We immediately remembered my cousin Split Pea, a green turtle who had been swimming in Paradise Lakes about three years ago. We had all been happily swimming together when suddenly there was a deafening noise and something hit Split Pea’s back and split his shell open.

One of his lungs was also punctured so that he could hardly breathe; in fact he nearly drowned! Then some strange land people came on their boat and jumped into the water after Split Pea. They took him away and we have never seen him since.

We raced back as quickly as we could to where all our other friends were. We told everyone to spread the word about the terrifying lights. We told everyone to meet at North Rock and then we would go to investigate the lights once more.

Soon we had over one hundred of our friends. There were parrot fish, grouper, barracuda, pompanos, yellow-tailed jacks, hogfish, snapper, wahoo and rockfish, as well as green turtles, spiny lobsters and octopuses.

When everyone was gathered together, Rocky and I told them about the strange lights. We made a plan to go off and see the lights before our parents called us in for bedtime. Together we nervously swam back to White’s Island.

Suddenly, when we were about to go closer to the surface, the lights started blinking and changing colour and moving towards us. Once again, we were all terrified to see the lights moving towards us!

We quickly swam as fast as we could deeper and deeper into the water, to where it was pitch black all around us! When we looked back up towards the surface, luckily we saw no lights.

We all swam slowly and carefully up, bit by bit. As soon as we saw the slightest bit of light, we froze for a second and then quickly retreated to the safety of the deeper water again. Every time we saw the lights we were very frightened but our curiosity made us keep going back to try again.

After a few more tries we gave up and tried to find our way back to town. But we were afraid of the lights so we swam with our eyes closed, fin in fin, until we bumped into something, and of course we did.

When we slowly and cautiously opened our eyes we froze completely in horror. We were absolutely terrified when we saw where we were. We had smacked straight into one of the boats that we were trying to escape from!

In all the confusion I put my head out of the water so I could get a breath. Once more I was shocked, but not scared like before. This time I was amazed at the sight I saw above the water. As I looked around, my friends were wondering what I was doing above the water. Then they saw what I saw and were amazed too.

Billy the Barracuda was the first to say anything. He said: “Hey look at those lights, they look just like you, Shelley”.

When I looked where he was looking I agreed he knew what he was talking about, for once.

Then Rocky said: “Hey look at that one in the back. It looks like Santa and his reindeer.”

Everywhere around us we were surrounded by big boats with beautiful lights in the shape of pictures.

We had discovered a long line of boats near the marina. There were lots of people on the shore waving and cheering at the people on the boats.

It was the most beautiful sight any of us had ever seen and a sight we would never, ever forget for the rest of our lives. This is what the real Christmas spirit feels like!