The ocean smells of a layer of wet sand that has dried in the night, that cracks and buckles under bare feet. It smells of blood that’s drawn from walking too close to a sharp coastal grass. The ocean smells of a blast of cold air that tightens the skin, of salt-caked lips, of the slap of tarmac on the drive home.

But, more literally, I’m told it smells of sulfuric seaweed and crushed shells and microscopic bacteria and fresh wind. Whatever that means. For decades, I have known those smells only through mimicry. I have read them in other people’s poetry, or stood beside someone as they described them in their rapture. I have never smelt them myself.