I have been so behind on putting together photo albums from our expeditions. 2018 was a blur of back to back trips. I finally cut together a photo album from our Tonga expedition from this past August. What an amazing place Tonga is. The humpback whale action is so amazing, we had hours of encounters with moms and calves everyday. Anyway, I truly hope you enjoy the photo album. It was a lot of fun capturing these images. Hope you enjoy.
Norway Adventure Photo Gallery
So I finally got around to editing the majority of the images from our Norway trip and cut together an album I am happy with. I do admit, I really miss the crazy cold conditions we had while visiting Norway. I miss the crunching of the snow, the beautiful white powder everywhere, I miss photographing wildlife while the snow fell, and especially the tension that was building every time we all walked together with our group in the snow. Someone was always looking over their shoulder, for fear that a snowball fight might ensue. Lol, but I do miss the fun we had with our amazing group out there. Anyway, here is the album I cut together from the trip, I hope you enjoy.
Tiger Beach Photo Gallery's
January has always meant Tigers and Great Hammerheads to us. For the past 7 , or 8? Maybe 9 years (don’t remember exactly when we started, it’s been a while.), we have run our annual trip to Tiger Beach for tiger sharks, and over the past 5 seasons great hammerheads. It has been an amazing time of year for us, with both highs and lows, because you never know what you are going to get when it comes to the weather. Some seasons we get perfect conditions, other seasons we get crap weather with challenging swells. The one thing that we have been fortunate to do is dive with big tigers and great hammerheads on ALL our January trips. Not that we haven’t on our October and December trips, because thankfully we have. But January is during the Bahamas winter season and you just never know what you are going to get. We kicked off 2019 with two back to back trips and here are a few images from our time spent here. I do hope you enjoy. Thanks again to our friends who joined us on these trips, you guys are amazing and we couldn’t do this without you. BIG HUG my friends.
Trip one. January 19 - 26, 2019.
Trip Two January 27 - February 3, 2019
My BEST and WORST Day at Tiger Beach!
Totally Gutted!
January 29, 2019, - So I dropped down for a feed on our second dive of the day and we had Patches the great hammerhead and a hand full of lemons buzzing around. No tigers. There was one lemon who was buzzing me pretty close that caught my attention. Her skin had a few wart looking spots on her and a crack on the left side of her gills. I started calling her Cracks. Just the name that came to mind.
Anyway, Cracks approached close on her passes, and so I started giving her a nose rub. She really enjoyed it and came back for more. Before I knew it, Cracks came in for the rub and once I started, she would stop swimming and drop her tail onto the sand... Like, completely stop swimming. Of course Patches, would come in and push her off, but I really enjoyed this interaction with Cracks. So, every time she would swim up to me, I would rub her, and each time, she would drop.
During one interaction, when she dropped, I just sort of stretched her out and allowed her to drop all the way down to lay down in front of me. This was the first time a swimming lemon shark, swam up to me, where I would rub her nose and she went completely still and drop down into the sand for me. It was one of the most amazing moments of my career. I was on fire. In all the years of working with lemon sharks, this had never happened before. It was a new behavior and I couldn’t be happier that I got to be a part of this magic. A few people were around me with cameras and I couldnt wait to go up and check out what they captured. This moment, and this interaction, is the stuff I dream about when I think of sharks.
THEN, reality hit my ass… NO ONE had captured it on video, my heart sank. A few stills here and there and my buddy / safety diver Houston, got a short piece of it on video, but not the entire interactions, I was gutted. They all thought this was normal and didn’t think much of it. I saw everyone filming, so I assumed it was being filmed, but nope! Something, I need to make sure doesn’t happen next time. I will beg someone to capture it. Of course, if there is a next time?
Easily the COOLEST lemon shark interaction I have EVER had in my entire career diving at Tiger Beach, and sadly I don’t have the entire video to share with the world. I have it in my heart and mind, but showing people what is possible with these amazing animals is lost this time. Hopefully, I will get another opportunity with Cracks, but it is so rare that we do not have tiger sharks on our dives, I do not think that opportunity will happen again. The moment is with me forever, but I really would of loved to share that moment with you all.
Thank you for reading…
Shark Feeding... Passing the Torch!
This past week, I cut together a vlog reflecting on a moment that meant a lot to me, watching my son, David, feeding sharks for Phantom Divers off Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
Now, David’s fed sharks before. He’s done it with me on my trips.
But that’s different. That’s “dad’s kid” feeding.
As cool as that is, there’s something next level about earning your own spot.
To become a core feeder for the dive shop, he had to bust his ass, because the guys feeding there are solid, and total Bad-Asses. (Well… except for Ramon. Kidding. Love you, brother.)
There really are no words to express how proud I am of David for the work, grit, and heart he’s put into becoming one of the shop’s main shark feeders.
He earned it.
Every bit of it.
Earlier this January, while he was visiting Texas and finalizing his Mexican visa, I had a chance to share a few thoughts on camera.
Hope you guys enjoy the vlog.
Thank you for reading our Blog.
*New Blogs posted 3–4 times a week.
(unless I am on an expedition, then we post daily trip reports.)
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Birding in the Rio Grande Valley
Crocodile Diving in Mexico
I cut together a quick vlog session for our Youtube channel, from our July 2018 crocodile expedition. It was a really good trip. The crocodiles were rock stars. Normally we have between 1 to 3 crocs on these trips. On this day, we had seven crocodiles try to come in, and by try I mean, they did come in, but they quickly got chased off by our dominate crocodile at the dive site, Gambit. Gambit is a big croc that has been the top crocodile here for quite a few years. Anyway, it was a really good trip and I had fun reminiscing . The comments our friends made that had joined us out there were really special. I hope you enjoy…
Anaconda Diving
Earlier this season when we visited the Pantanal to go diving with anacondas, I recorded this interview with our host operator, Daniel de Granville. It was a quick fun chat, discussing the myths surrounding anacondas vs. the reality of this very special animal. I recorded this interview for an upcoming podcast show we have planned for 2019. However, I also wanted to share it on our Youtube Channel. So here it is, I hope you enjoy.
Spotted Dolphin Photo Album
We just added a photo album from our 2018 expedition to swim with these animals off Bimini. We learned alot about photographing these fast moving animals, which is a challenge because they move so fast, so you can not shoot with lower shutter speeds. You can if you are going for an effect, but if you want sharp images of these speed demons flying past you, a quicker shutter speed is required.
Thankfully, the waters off Bimini, Bahamas are amazing and forgiving, so you can bump up the shutter speed without necessarily raising your ISO too much. So I was able to shoot them with, between a 200-400 ISO. So I photographed most of these images with between a 500-700 shutter speed, F8 and between 200-400 ISO.
I also normally post more topside images of our friends who joined us on our adventures, which I use my Iphone for. However, I drowned my phone in Africa this summer, on the sardine run, so sadly, I lost all my images from this trip. So sorry about this guys…
So if you are interested in checking out our photo gallery, please click here. Or on the photo. Thank you my friends for visiting our website.
Grey Whale Vlog
I cut together a vlog from our first visit to Baja for grey whales. It was an emotional day for me. I was overwhelmed with how incredible this experience was. Which is probably why it took me so long to release this video. I was embarrassed but after looking at it again, I dont care, how I feel is how I feel. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.