Damn, what a year it has been. I realize I have not been updating my blog, so for those of you that read my blog, I apologize. The year has been busy, and I admit to being a bit overwhelmed with it all. The traveling, the wildlife, family, friends… all of it is taxing on the soul.

I love what I do. It truly is a privilege to travel around the world and hang out with amazing people, looking for wildlife to photograph. Telling stories and being a voice for the voiceless is my job. But damn, you do pay a price for life off the beaten path. Not being there for everything is definitely the most challenging part of this life. It is a knife in the gut.

But I am also addicted to nature, and adventure, and telling positive stories about wildlife. It's part of why I breathe. As a storyteller in this wildlife world, I get to sit in a different seat. My job is to share this world and try to help the reader slide into my mind and enjoy the journey and these wild places with me.

I am not sure if my writing style evokes any emotion from people, but I do try and capture my feelings when I am out there, and I hope that comes across in my writing. Still determining if it does, but gonna keep trying anyway.

So onto today's post.

I just got home from epic back-to-back trips… the first trip was to Churchill, Canada, for a chance to photograph polar bears in the snow. This is something I have dreamed of doing for many years. It was definitely worth the wait, and the experience exceeded my waking dreams.

What a special place Churchill is. This town and the people there are extraordinary. Everyone there lives with the knowledge that polar bears are all over the place. When I was there, they showed me a video of a polar bear trying to smash in a window at someone's house to try and get in their kitchen. That is a normal occurrence for them, no big deal.

They have a polar bear police unit that works 24-7.

It is insane… but it is also so damn cool! I freaking love it there and want to stay much longer. The idea that you are not free to go for a jog because you always have to be wary that the world's largest land predator might be sleeping on the side of the road, or behind a bush sounds like heaven to me.

More on this story and place later.

The second trip was to one of my favorite places on the planet… Tiger Beach. This was such a special trip for me because it was the official passing of the torch. I have been feeding and dancing with tiger sharks for over 14 years now, and this year I got to pass the bait box over to my son David. He has been feeding sharks for a few years now (mostly in Mexico), but this is his first full season working in the Bahamas with tiger sharks.

Pretty damn wild.

We got to both feed and work with the tigers on this trip, and it was truly a privilege to watch him work. Meanwhile, he was also enjoying sitting back and watching me work with the sharks -

…that was tripping him out, easy to forget its your old man down there dancing with tigers.

He has seen me work with tigers many times before, but this was the first trip where we were both there as equals… watching each other's backs, helping each other out, and feeling the fear and adrenaline that comes with intimately interacting with big predatory sharks.

We did a night shark feed, something we do on all our Tiger Beach trips. It is always one of the highlights of the trip. They are never easy because we are feeding tigers at night, with limited visibility. The guests love it, but for me, they have always been super intense. I looked at David and said, "You are doing the feed." He said ok, not really knowing what to expect. It was his first night feed.

We had four big tigers show up, and I watched his back on the box, knowing full well that he was in the arena on fire inside… clenched! His adrenaline was spiking hard. I have been in that seat many times and I know how gnarly it can be. This was his first, and with all those big tigers, it was an intense and exciting dive.

He killed it out there… masterfully working with these animals. It was magical to see. I am not gonna lie, my heart was in my throat a few times, but that is all part of the magic. It is a game of inches.

I want to keep writing, but going to cut these stories short…the photo trip reports are coming soon. This blog was more of my need to get back to writing and sharing stories with you all again on our website.

It has been too damn long.

So until the next one, my friends, thank you for reading.

We ended our whale shark expedition and had a couple of days to relax and just do nothing if we wanted to, but that just wouldn’t be our style, the Yucatan is rich with animal life and we needed to go and find something wild.

BUT FIRST…

fishermen turning in their tools of the trade.

We said goodbye to our friends on Isla Mujeres, and then a few hours later, we attended a ceremony to celebrate, and kick off the new Shark Eco-tourism project on Isla Mujeres. It is an exciting project that will hopefully change the lives of many people for the better, and save thousands of sharks. The Saving our Sharks conservation group has secured funding and has reached an agreement with the commercial shark fishermen cooperative to try ecotourism vs. Shark Fishing. This is a three year project that will hopefully create annual sustainable income for the fishermen by taking tourists out to see sharks vs killing them.

Talking to the shark fishermen about my experiences with eco-tourism and it’s financial importance to the local economies.

There are many stages to this project and it is going to take a lot of work to make it happen, but it is exciting to think that if it does work, real change will have happened here… for the people, for the sharks, for the island and for our oceans.

I sit on the board for this organization and am extremely proud to be a part of it and will do what I can to try and help it succeed. Anyway, I am going to write many blogs about this project, because there are so many layers to it, but first… an adventure post.

Tamara and Sophia prepping tanks at the cenote.

After we left Isla Mujeres, Mari, Sophia and I had a couple of days to rest and relax before we went home, but decided instead to check out some spots that I had been hearing about. Originally we wanted to go back to Punta Laguna, near Coba to photograph spider monkeys and howler monkeys, but instead decided to check a croc spot in a cenote in the city of Tulum.

Tulum is not really a place I spend much time at. I am not really a fan of how fast the place is growing. I liked it the way it used to be, as a small one horse town. Now, it’s turned into little Hollywood, just not my thing. A lot of people like it, but I like smaller places; Less people, more nature. But Tulum does have some Cenotes with pretty exciting wildlife in them, and that is why I am here.

I had been hearing stories about a morelet’s crocodile named Panchita, made famous by the locals, that was hanging around one of the cenotes in town. I filed the story away in the back of my mind as a one day I will check it out.

Slowly more and more photos and videos started surfacing of Panchita and that was it… I decided we needed to check out. So I called up a friend who works in the area, and Maritza, Sophia and I went to see what it was the locals were raving about and yup, I am a fan.

Our buddy Tamara works with one of the local dive shops that specializes in cave diving and cenotes. She happily set us up to find this beautiful little croc. This was my first time seeing this species, so I was on fire to snap some images of the beauty. There was a very specific shot I was after, which is the crocodile ascending, to the surface from the depths below, with mangroves in the back ground. That is the shot I had in my mind’s eye.

The morelet’s croc is a small species, they do not get very big, maybe six feet on average. The one here in the cenote is extremely habituated, and super very well behaved. She is used to seeing snorkelers and swimmers all day long, and everyday, so she is very tolerant.

However most people who visit this particular cenote are not expecting to see a croc, and react in one of two ways, either with fear or fascination. I watched from below on scuba as she was swimming around on the surface, tourist snorkelers swimming all over the place, most not knowing she was there. But the moment they would see here… it turned to complete chaos . A couple was snorkeling right next to her and never saw her. The guy turned and saw her, and freaked the hell out. He panicked, and then his girl panicked and they both swam away from her as fast as possible. Thankfully there are guides there to make sure no one really harasses or grabs her.

Of course, one of the guides thought I was too close and aggressively asked me to move back, which I did. But moments later allowed his snorkeling guests to come in and see her as they finlessly kicked and flailed towards her, trying to get a closer look. Eight snorkelers all flapping around trying to look at her. She tired of them, and then tucked herself away into an area where they could not get close to her, because they were on snorkel. She has a few hiding spots like that through out the cenote to evade her gawking fans so she can hang out in peace, which is cool.

Darter swimming. Really want another shot at photographing this beauty.

She tucked up on one of her spots, and we quietly entered to watch her for a bit and then left her alone to rest, and went off to find one of the other residents of this cenote, a diving bird called a Darter, or Anhinga, or a snake bird. These birds dive down into the water and swim around hunting for fish, they have a snake like neck that they coil and use their beak like a spear, piercing the fish when they hunt. Their bill has serrated edges to keep the fish from sliding off once it is stabbed. Wicked cool birds.

The bird was hunting for fish and it allowed me to follow it along, I tried hard to get a close up shot of it underwater, but I never did get close enough. I got a few shots, but none that I was excited about. Looks like I need to get back there, and soon!

After I finished dancing around with my bird, we went back to check out the croc and sure enough it was on the move again, so we followed her around and then it happened, Panchita dove down, and slowly rose back up. I was on fire, snapping shot after shot, hoping that one or two of them would come out. She swam around for a while longer, dropping down a few more times, I fired away. I was not sure how the images were going to come out, because she dropped a few times in spots that were pretty shadowy so I wasn’t sure if they were going to come out.

A few times she rested in spots on the surface where the sun light was directly overhead and I snapped a few of those shots, hoping one or two of them would work out. I could of stayed with this beautiful croc for hours, but my Sophia was turning blue from the cold water. I had not realized it had almost been three hours of diving.

We called it a day and headed back to the spot where we exited the cenote. Right by the steps, I looked down and got one more final treat, a blue crab had climbed out of its hiding hole into the light and was walking along the bottom on a boulder covered in green algae, giving a beautiful color contrast to its brilliant blue body. I stopped to snap a couple of shots of it before it scurried off.

I surfaced and there was Tamara with her gopro in hand asking the three of us if we were happy or extremely happy. The three of us at the same time said, “extremely happy”.

It was such a good day and such a good dive. Thanks again to Tamara, we are already looking forward to our return to this crazy town, for another shot at this perfect croc.

Thank you for reading.

Back to Writing... Sorry It has been a While.

Crocodile Diving in Tulum and Helping Sharks!