Final Day and Final Thoughts!

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We ended our trip here on Isla Mujeres with a bang! We headed out in a lumpy sea. Sadly it was bumpier than I would have liked it to be. I was hoping for a calm, slow rolling sea, like our day one. But nope, we had some strong winds, which kicked things up a bit.

That is nature, and not much we can do about that. Despite the bumps, the sharks had been found pretty quickly, but unfortunately, we got there late. There were a lot of boats around them, and after a couple of jumps, we decided to get out of the area to try and find a spot with some shark action and fewer boats.

It didn’t take long. We found an area with not as many sharks but much less boat traffic, so we decided to try our luck with the sharks here. It was a win… we had a lot of good encounters, and it was a lot of fun.

One by one, the tourist boats left until it was just our two boats and a bunch of whale sharks. It was a magical way to end the trip. We spent our remaining time left with one shark. The shark was super relaxed, it would coke bottle on the surface, then swim down deep for a minute or two, then it would return to the surface and begin coke bottle feeding again. Coke bottling is what we call it when the shark stops swimming and stays in one spot, to suck feed.

It is the best interactions when they do that.

So our two boats took turns swimming with this shark for over an hour. It was absolute MAGIC! Finally, the shark stopped feeding, swam down, and disappeared. The few of us in the water swam back to the boat, all of us on cloud nine. Just on fire!

I was about to climb up on our boat when I turned around and see… the shark had resurfaced. It followed us to the boat as if she was saying, “Hey, where did you all go?”

Damn, if I do not get emotional when things like that happen to me, to us.

It is sometimes truly overwhelming, we still have so much to learn about these animals.

We finished the day with a fun snorkel on a reef near Contoy island. That is always a great way to say goodbye to this very special place.

Thank you guys for reading, and to my friends who joined us out there, thank you so much for making this trip and this week so flipping amazing… a big hug and safe journeys home.

Hope to see you all again and soon.

Where do I Begin???

Ok, so I have been going through old hard drives trying to figure out what to post, and damn, it is HARD trying to figure out where to start. So many stories to choose from, I feel blessed to have spent that last 17 years working with wildlife. It has been so great revisiting these moments in time - so many great memories. Looking at my early trips, I realized, I didn’t take many still images. I spent the whole time recording videos, and there was no iphone back then. So that is one of the issues I am faced with when looking at the oldest of my trips. It was also pre- gopro, so much of the video that I recorded, is just underwater footage.

Image by my bro Victor Holmes

So I decided to begin with a throwback to where it all began for me, which was July 2011, on our whale shark expedition. That trip was one of the very first ones, where I took a gopro with me and just started documenting everything. I wish I continued to do that on every single trip, because those trips are so well documented with video clips, both topside and underwater. So great for story telling purposes. So for today I reposted on our Youtube channel, the first video vlog I recorded from that trip…

As I move forward with these stories and videos from the archives, I will share more details about the experiences. I do remember when I first started, being nervous talking to the camera, but I was also very excited… because a new chapter of story telling had begun.

When I started Shark Diver magazine back in 2003, I knew I wanted to incorporate video into what we did. I felt that we could tell better stories with video, then just with written words. In fact I hired a videographer for our very first expedition (sandtiger sharks, Morehead City, NC). He edited the video and sent me the final product, but it was not what I envisioned and so we scraped the idea. He made a video that you sell to tourists. I wasn’t looking for that. I was looking for a video that shared and showed this crazy life and journey we had just begun.

I attempted to do it again in 2006, and the end product of that, was a documentary I produced, called Summer of the Sharks. Which was a lot of fun. It was a buddy shark diving road trip movie and I loved making it. Again, the film itself was edited and directed by someone else, so it was not entirely what I wanted, but it was damn close.

So finally in 2011, I started learning how to edit my own stuff to try and create moments and memories that were in my mind’s eye.

These early videos are not perfect, and I wish I could go back and correct them, but they are perfect in their in-perfections. This journey and phase of my life was a lot of fun and I was super pumped up about it, because I knew this was going to open up a whole new world for me and the stories I was able to tell. The gopro was going to give me freedom that no other camera had in the past.

So, here we go, the journey continues…

Whale Sharks, Whale Sharks and MORE Whale Sharks.

July 16, 2019 - 5:33pm our first day of whale shark diving off Isla Mujeres, Mexico. It was a good but tough day. So many new laws and regulations here, the captains were nervous as hell about it. CONAAP has everyone on their toes and up in arms. So now it is mandatory for everyone to wear life jackets. Even in the water. You can do a one free diver and one guide, but they do not allow for two anymore. Just silly.

Over all we had an awesome day and despite the headaches of this new law, everyone had a good time. We stayed out as long as we could and everyone had a chance to get some solid whale shark time in. A very good first day. Of course there was so much food in the water that the sharks are feeding on, all my pictures are full of suck. Tomorrow is another day, hoping for patches of blue water for some decent images. Hoping for a coke bottling shark, that is always the best photo opportunities. A static shark that is just filter feeding in one spot.

July 17, 2019 - Day two of our whale shark expedition. We had a really good day - today the whale sharks were all surface feeding and there were a lot of sharks. Of course we are still dealing with the new rules, which are tough, but we will get used to them. A lot of silly bullshit if you ask me. Some of the other boats are asking for some sort of standard across the board service. Basically, they want everyone to act the same. Same crap service they give to tourists and bucket listers, who just want something to do on vacation. Which has nothing to do with the sharks or an appreciation for them.

They want to end the service some of the better operators provide to people who want to see these sharks and want to spend quality time with these animals. It is horrible, and each year, they think of new rules to try and create more road blocks for the better operators. They even turned down prop guards for their boats, which will help protect the sharks and the swimmers. The excuse they use;  because they do not want to spend the money. It truly shows those operators do not give a shit about these animals. I saw fresh cuts on a whale shark today, just horrible when you know that it can be avoided.

July 18, 2019 - Just got back from day 3 in the water. We decided this morning to put an effort into finding manta rays. Sadly,  we did not find any. Where the hell are they? Last season they were all over the place, yet this season we have not seen any. No one has this week. Last week our captain told us they had a lot of mantas, but so far… goose egg. 

The action today was good but hard. A lot of sharks but they wanted nothing to do with us. Part of that behavior I am very familiar with. Tomorrow it will be a great day, because the sharks will be feeding hard and they will not care about us. Hoping to find a coke bottling shark. So far I have not seen one yet. Our guests have, thankfully. Yesterday our guests had some decent coke bottling action. I stayed on the boat while they took turns photographing the shark. By the time it was my turn, the shark swam off. Tomorrow - tomorrow is my day.

The plan tomorrow is to head out a bit earlier than our normal 9 am departure. We are headed to Contoy Island to try and find mantas, and a loggerhead for me. Still need me a loggerhead. Hoping to find a mating pair, which would be epic! The area around Contoy is always a really good spot for manta rays, so hoping to find some for our guests.

Side note; my best friend Tommy arrived here last night, along with my inlaws, and my son Gabriel. Lots of family here with my guests. Love it when my family joins me out here, it always makes travel so much more special.

July 19, 2019 - And it is over. Our time with the whale sharks has ended. It was a good four days of shark diving. No mantas, but damn, where the hell did they freaking go? This was the most stressful week of swimming with these sharks that we have ever experienced. The new rules were hard to deal with, but we made the best of it and figured out how to have an amazing time within the rules and everyone got plenty of water time. Hoping these guys get their shit together and create some rules that make sense for the sharks and the people who want to see them. 

I just did a quick check and it is officially 15 years that I have been running this trip. I have swam with whale sharks now for 15 years in a row, that is so wild. A lot of changes since that first trip. We originally started running these trips off Holbox but we decided to change the location over 10 years ago when the sharks were spending more time near Isla Mujeres then Holbox. It cut travel time by an hour each way. 

I do miss Holbox, especially now that I am big into bird photography, Holbox is a birder’s paradise. But Isla is better for our guests. It is more touristy with a lot more for them to do. 

So we spent the morning seeking out manta rays around Contoy and nada. No mantas… they are just gone this week. Our friend Tracey saw two of them down deep in the whale shark grounds. It was a super brief encounter and that was the best the mantas gave us. We spent all morning looking for them and nothing. About 11:30 we admitted defeat and went to finish up the day with the whale sharks. The sharks were everywhere, lots of feeding sharks AND lots of coke bottling sharks. 

Our guests had a lot of opportunities to photograph these sharks and they all left the water happy. On my final swim of the trip, I followed a slow swimming shark for a short while, when magic happened. She stopped swimming and went vertical. I finally got my coke bottling shark. She allowed me to snap a few images of her, before she decided to start swimming again. I was on fire and so very grateful for these amazing animals and this amazing place. 

Tonite we will get together for one final group meal together. Going to have dinner by the water to watch the sunset. A perfect way to end this weird but wonderful trip. Thanks to all our friends who joined us, you all are amazing souls. Love you guys.

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