OPENING your eyes underwater can be an enlightening experience, especially if you’re floating over a coral reef in a sea packed with tropical fish. But without goggles it’s usually just a big blur – unless, that is, you belong to the Moken people, who live on the Surin Islands off the west coast of Thailand. Moken children are seeing the underwater world with a clarity that most people only see in photographs.
Anna Gislen, who studies vision at the University of Lund in Sweden, began studying Moken children a few years ago after hearing they could pick out small mussels on…
