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New Trip Report - Borneo!

Hey guys, wanted to let you know what was new on our website in case you do not subscribe to our newsletter, if you do not… shame on you! There is some good stuff on there. But no worries, I am reposting our newsletter here so you don’t miss out. Lol, hope you enjoy.

In my happy place…snapping images of the forest giants.

In my happy place…snapping images of the forest giants.


Greetings from Borneo,

Well, I am not actually in Borneo anymore, I am writing this on my couch, back in Texas. But it sounded way better as an opening for this newsletter. AND, we just returned from there, for the third expedition of the 2020 season. No real words that I can ever use to explain that trip, and the wildlife we encountered. It is the stuff dreams are made of! I know that I sound like I am over selling it, but this was my first trip to this part of the world. To see these animals, in the wild, without cages, in their natural habitat, is such a damn good feeling.

We piggy-backed this trip with our thresher shark trip off Malapascua Island, Philippines. That trip was also really good. We dove with thresher sharks everyday, and we had some amazing macro-dives, where we encountered, or sort of encountered, the elusive pygmy seahorse. And I say, sort of encountered, because that thing is so tiny - it is hard to put into words, of just how tiny it is. I did'n’t bring a macro lens on this trip, so I wasn’t able to capture images of it, but I did see a bigger yellow seahorse, which was absolutely beautiful, and we did see some spectacular reefs. The color on these reefs is like nothing I have ever seen before. I was blown away.

So onto the contents of this week’s Newstter.;



TRIP REPORT

I opened up this newsletter sharing my feelings about the magic of our Borneo trip, and if you want to read all about it, I kept a journal of my experience while I was there, and published it on our website as a trip report. Along with a lot of the images we captured from the experience.
GIVE IT A READ



NEW PODCAST

Big News for us to share is - we have started a podcast, SDM’s Wild World. We post new episode’s every Monday, and we may change that to every Friday, not sure yet? It is currently available on Anchor, Spotify, Apple. Super pumped about our show. So far we have 4 episodes out. So if you enjoy podcasts, please give us a listen. We are pretty sure you will enjoy it. I have attached a link to our Apple podcast for you to check out. Hope you enjoy it.
LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST


TRIP OF THE WEEK

So I am adding this little feature to promote our upcoming trips, but at the same time, share with you my thoughts on a particular trip we are doing and what you guys, if you join us, would potentially experience.

The trip I am highlighting this week, is our upcoming May orca expedition off Baja. Guys, it really is hard to describe the thrill of dropping in and seeing an orca in the water. It wasn’t that long ago that people thought it was impossible to safely swim with an orca. The thoughts were, that if you did, it would attack you. Thankfully, those ancient ideas are almost gone, and I say almost, because, I still get people asking me, if I ever feel threatened by them. My answer and the answer of every single person who has ever been in the water with one is, “NO, not ever”.

They truly are amazing animals to swim with and even if you do not get the chance to join us, for one of our two trips, (off Baja and we also offer Norway trips to swim with them), I truly hope you go with someone else to experience these animals.

Before it is too late…

and by that I mean, there are only a couple of places left where swimming with orcas is allowed, and currently there are talks of researchers shutting down swimming with orcas in Norway as well. So just like swimming with beluga whales off Churchill was regrettably shut down, you don’t want to hit that day where they no longer allow swimming with orcas as well.

PHOTO GALLERY

Before we go, here are a few images from the trips we just returned from. Hope you enjoy!


Thresher shark off Malapascua Island, Philippines.

Thresher shark off Malapascua Island, Philippines.

That tail!

That tail!

The reefs off Malapascua, some of the prettiest I have ever seen.

The reefs off Malapascua, some of the prettiest I have ever seen.

Orangutan mom and baby.

Orangutan mom and baby.

Proboscis monkey. These guys are endemic to Malaysia.

Proboscis monkey. These guys are endemic to Malaysia.

Pygmy elephant. We waited over an hour for a chance to see these elephants dip into the water to cool off. It was worth it.

Pygmy elephant. We waited over an hour for a chance to see these elephants dip into the water to cool off. It was worth it.

Thank you for reading… have a great week!

WE HAVE A PODCAST!

We just added a new podcast to our website and diverse social media outlets. This is something we have wanted to do for years! Super excited for this and really excited about sharing it with you all here. I am working on getting it on all the different outlets that carry podcasts and as we get picked up by the different places, we will let you guys know where you all can listen to it and hopefully subscribe to our show. For now it is available on Anchor and Spotify. Here is the link for you, if you are interested in checking it out. We will soon have a page dedicated solely to our podcast.

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For our first episode of SDM’s Wild World, we sat down with Captain Scott Smith of the Dolphin Dream. The DD is a liveaboard we have been chartering since 2005 for our tiger sharks and great hammerhead expeditions to Tiger Beach. During this podcast, we talked, sharks, dolphins, eco-tourism and the life he has been living as a dive boat captain for the past 40 years! Hope you enjoy.

I sat down with Capt Scott Smith, owner of the Dolphin Dream, the boat operator we have used to dive Tiger Beach for the past 16 seasons. We talked sharks, dolphins, eco-tourism and the past 40 years of Captain's life, living and working and playing in the Bahamas

Trip # 1 of the New Year!

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We just returned from Tiger Beach, Bahamas for the first trip of the new travel year. I wish I could say it was the perfect trip, with perfect seas and lots and lots of big sharks. Sadly, we can’t say that. I am happy to report that we had lots of big sharks, however the conditions were less than favorable. We had wind, and swells and horrible, horrible visibility. We did make the most of it though and dove as much as the ocean would allow us too. And thankfully everyone that joined us was super pumped and made the most of everyday we were out there. So thanks again to our friends who joined us out there, you guys are awesome.

I did keep a journal of our trip, so figured the best way to narrate this story is to give you guys a look at my daily journal - and the highs and lows of life in and on the ocean for this trip.

January 20, 2020 - Sitting here at Fish Tales, and haven’t been able to dive yet. It has been crap vis with wind all morning. When we arrived, we had just hit low tide and with the wind, we didn’t have any visibility. So this morning has been a lot of editing for me and chatting it up with a few of our guests.

AT THE END OF THE DAY…
Today’s dive report - It was shit, shit, shit visibility at Fish Tales. We had plenty of tigers including; Hook, Maui, I think Tequila made an appearance, Dirty girl? (I think), a couple of tigers I didn’t really know and Jitter Bug is back. Damn! She is no  longer pregnant, which means, she pupped her first litter of babies. This was officially her first litter. So this means, she will be fattening up this season and maybe she will be breeding again this season. I don’t know if she will be breeding this winter, not sure when exactly she pupped? But next winter for sure she will. So if we are on schedule for a late winter 2020 mating, then the following winter 2021, she should be pupping again. So my prediction is she will show up very fat in December 2021. If she doesn’t breed sooner.  

Hook in the murk.

Hook in the murk.

Anyway, so we did three dives today including a sunset dive that turned into a night dive, with a bait crate, which was scary as fudge. There was four tigers including Jitter Bug. Hook showed up and so did Dirty Girl, and some random tiger I didn’t know. The vis was horrible, maybe 15-20 feet, if that. I only brought five pieces of bait down with me, and thankfully so. The tigers didn’t go crazy because the bait scent was not strong. Jitterbug was a pain in the ass and super on fire. She is still up to her old trick and really hard to work with. I do hope she calms down. Never fun when she acts like that, especially at night in low vis conditions.

Tomorrow looks like it may be blown out and if it is, I am going to record our first podcast with Capt. Scott. It is fitting that he is part of my first podcast. I built my career abroad the Dolphin Dream working with tigers, and this is a great way to pay homage to the super good guy that helped me do it. Gonna be a good day, either way! 

Dusk dive with reef shark.

Dusk dive with reef shark.

Jitterbug

Jitterbug

January 21, 2020 - Weather day. However we did get one morning dive in. It was a freaking mess. We had ok vis near the surface, but at the bottom it was complete shit. When we jumped in, we had some swells, but no whitecaps, by the middle of the dive the vis got worse and we called it a day. When I hit the surface, the wind had kicked in hard and the boat was rocking and rolling in a stormy sea. The ocean was mean today. After everyone boarded up, we ran for a safe place to lee up.

We had three tigers, Freckles, Jitterbug and Kim Possible. Stressful day. Jitterbug, is such a pesky shark. Tigers are comfortable in the murk, and we needed to keep a close eye on her whenever she showed up. Today also marked the return of bull sharks ( they were around the prior week, but my first time seeing them here this winter season), to Tiger Beach. In December they were a no-show, but they were back. Here off TB, they are well behaved, so they are always a welcomed treat.

January 22, 2020 - Well no diving today. We had some major weather issues this trip and we had to take shelter behind the island of Grand Bahamas. Some of the guests dove on a reef that was pretty, but no real life on it to pass the time. There are no animals due to the locals fishing it out. Sad really.

I did learn something amazing yesterday. One of my favorite tigers Freckles, showed up at TB this past October with a torn up dorsal fin. It looks like she will be breeding this winter and the boys are getting ready for her. In October, it didn’t look like a successful mating because only her dorsal fin was torn up. Normally, when I believe the matings are more successful is when the female has bite marks on her body, which shows me that she has allowed a male to get close enough to her to pin her down for a mating. I think fin bites only on a tiger, means she is running from them as they are trying to catch her. When I saw her yesterday, she had a lot more bite marks on her body, which showed me that she either had a successful pairing, or she is about to mate any day now.

I snapped a picture of her yesterday which showed her dorsal fin which is healing and filling in super fast. the time span is about three months. Their healing strength and speedy fin regeneration ability is awesome.

Tonite we depart for Bimini. Sadly, we did not have epic blue water dives for our guests with tiger sharks. We did have tiger sharks, but not the dives you read, see and dream about when planning a trip to Tiger Beach. Always makes me feel bad for our guests when that happens. The ocean can be cruel.

January 23, 2020 - BIMINI ISLAND well we had a good day of diving today. We dove three times with great hammerheads and bull sharks. The first dive, conditions were amazing. Blue water, lots of sun and four great hammerheads with well behaved nurse sharks. The boys put the bait box on a buoy and that seemed to help control the nurse sharks. The second and third dive, conditions sort of fell apart. We had low tide roll in with the weird smokey haze it brings with it. We had less hammers with about five bulls. They are getting braver it seems and may be forcing out the hammers.

I managed some fun pics that I am proud of. Hopefully tomorrow we will get better conditions and more chances for images. Hoping for a good last day for our guests, they deserve it after this week.

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January 24, 2020 - Final day of diving. Our day started out great. We woke up to a flat calm ocean with perfect skies. We had three great hammerheads show up and right away, it was going off. The hammers were coming in to the bait box and it was an amazing time. With the new baitbox set up, the nurse sharks were behaving themselves and it was just awesome. It was a great beginning to our day.

THEN… the bull sharks showed up and it became a shit show. The bulls scared off the hammerheads and they no longer were interested in visiting the bait box. So the dive turned into a bull shark dive, which wouldn’t be bad, if we were there to dive with bull sharks. The hammerheads were around, they just spent their time in the out skirts of the dive, and stopped coming in. All in all it was a good day of diving, but without the bulls, it would of been better.

I wanted to say thanks to our friends who joined us out there… thanks for being troopers while mother nature kicked us around. You guys are so freaking awesome!

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Green Anaconda Photo Profile

WILDLIFE PHOTO PROFILE
Green Anaconda. Bonito, Brazil.
One of the best experiences of my diving career was visiting the Pantanal and swimming with green anacondas. These highly misunderstood predators have been vilified by the media and the general public for years. When I jumped in the water with them, I was not sure what to expect. I knew they were not the monsters they were made out to be, because, the one thing the media is good at is - over exaggerating all predatory species. But I wanted to find out about their temperament. How tolerant they were with divers, how passive were they towards another species, once they have been seen. I just was not sure.

When we jumped in with this very large 4 meter snake, she wanted nothing to do with us and swam away. First, she swam off fast, then when she realized we were not a threat, she slowed down. She still kept swimming away from us, but she was not in a hurry. The snake was a total sweetheart, and I felt truly blessed to be in the water with her. The greatest thing I learned about her, was that again, the public has vilified another predatory species without knowing anything about them. This encounter happened, over a year ago, but I can still see it in my mind's eye. It forever will be one of my most treasured encounters with a wild animal.

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STORYTELLING IN 2020

Photographing humpbacks in Tonga.

Photographing humpbacks in Tonga.

It all begins again. A brand new year. I have never been much of a New Years resolution guy, but I always try and think about fresh new ideas and I always want to set new goals. Of course, like most resolutions they tend to fade with time and life and inconvenience. However, the one thing I always say to myself each year is - I want to communicate even better with you all. I want to share more stories, and write more blogs and create more videos, and so on and so on. 

Dancing with tigers in the Bahamas

Dancing with tigers in the Bahamas

I am a story teller, I always have been. It  is how I communicate the best. The thing is, how should I communicate? There are so many platforms to do it on, and I try to do my best on each of them, but it is not easy. I always start strong, but by mid-year, (sometimes sooner), I just stop, and I always fall short. I love recording video blogs, but that is so time consuming, and not always the easiest emotionally to do and share. I know I need to bring someone in to edit them for me, but again, I am not really sure if I am there yet for that?

I love photography, that one is the easiest, because you can post a photo, write a caption and then put it out there pretty quickly. But photos don’t always express what I think or feel about an amazing moment, the way video does. 

Photographing jaguars in Brazil.

Photographing jaguars in Brazil.

I just don’t know? I do know that I truly enjoy writing, it is the one thing I have always enjoyed. So I may be doing more of that this season. Maybe it is not as exciting as a vlog, but it is where my heart has always felt free. So I might do a lot more writing this year. I mean, I write in a journal almost daily, but of course I do not share most of that. Something’s have to be written for yourself, to keep your mind and soul beating together, and for my sanity. Expressing my thoughts in a journal, is just how I have always done that.

Hanging out with Gambit the crocodile. Banco Chinchorro, MX.

Hanging out with Gambit the crocodile. Banco Chinchorro, MX.

All I know is, I want to create more content for you guys, but… I do not want to promise you guys that I will be sharing more scheduled (vlogs, or blogs, or images, or videos, or podcasts, (even though that is way over due). ), and then fail and fall short when they do not come out in a timely fashion. I always stress out about it, and it loses its enjoyment. With our crazy schedule, I am just going to do as much as I can, and share as much as I can of this amazing life that we are experiencing. I will be doing a lot this year, just not going to create a schedule that I stress out about when I miss a date, or a week. So I am gonna wing it, and in the end will mean much more fun for me, and a lot more posts.

In Norway for orcas.

In Norway for orcas.

Because at the end, the reason I love doing all this is, I get to talk about animals and the amazing places that they live in. And my passion is the animals and sharing their story with you all. That is the stuff I live for.

Anyway, this little rant is just the beginning of the many rants and vlogs coming your way this year. This one, wasn’t specifically about animals, it is just some thoughts I wanted to share with you all. So until the next one my friends… of course, not sure when it will be, but for sure there will be a next one. lol

Thanks for reading.

2019 End of Year Slide Show!

2019 was a WOW year, filled with amazing adventures. I am truly grateful that we get to share with people this wild world and the wildlife that we share this planet with. One of the bonuses to being out there, is not only helping our friends who join us on our travels with their photographic journeys, but also having the opportunity to capture images of the animals we encounter as well. So for the first blog of the new year, I am honored to share with you, my favorite captures of the 2019 season… I hope you enjoy!

Arctic Orcas... Just DAMN!

November 28, 2019 - I am sitting here in Oslo, Norway in my hotel room trying to process this past week and our time with Norway’s orcas. It has been one hell of a week, and it is going to be a long time until I am able to forget this week and what I saw and felt. Not really sure where to begin and not going to bore you with the travel details, all I can say is I was completely overwhelmed with emotions this week. There was so many orcas, I mean we hit either the jackpot, or one of the best weeks of the season when we got here. Hundreds of orcas were out here scattered all over the Fjords. Along with a good 40 to 50 humpback whales as well. Maybe even more. There was a lot of them.

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And I am not sure what the humpbacks were doing? Along with seeking out herring to eat, they were also doing some weird socializing, where they would sit together at the surface, and then all together just drop down to the depths, then pop up to the surface, in another area, and do it again.. Sometimes it was 5 or 6, and sometimes more. During one of these sittings, we counted 30 humpback whales. It was crazy. We jumped in with them during that massive gathering and caught glimpses of them as they dropped down to the depth. It was one hell of a show.

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My biggest fear, when I am here in the Arctic, is of course the weather. I was nervous about being cold on the boat, (because I have been on our previous trips…like miserably cold). But this time around I did it right. I wore the right combination of under garments to help keep me toasty warm for my moments in the water and on the boat. The secret, for those of you interested is wearing a neoprene shorty wetsuit underneath my fleece undergarment, and it freaking worked so well. It kept my core warm, which kept everything else comfortable.

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Super pumped for next season when I improve on it for added warmth and flexibility. Of course next season I think I am going to dive semi-dry. I want to be able to free dive a little bit better. This year I was stuck at the surface in my dry suit, with no real opportunity to free dive properly, even though I had weights. Just didn’t get it dialed in right, but I am cool with it. My biggest fear was not being comfortable in the water, and I was, so am happy with this experience.

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So back to the orcas, and not really sure where to start; although I know where I want to finish is with the herring fishermen. There are a lot of herring boats out there and the amount of fish they are taking is going to have a serious impact on these orca and humpback whale populations. I am hoping the officials will come to their senses, or at least look at the amount of money being brought in to this country, due to tourism and hopefully change their policies and quotas on herring fishing, because they take a lot of fish. The tourism here brings in a lot of money for the locals. It is an extremely important revenue stream and I think much more sustainable than herring fishing, for the local economies.

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Any way back to the orcas; I think what I will do is share from my personal journal, notes from our best day on the water. Because that day was so damn good.

November 25, 2019 - Today I finally had the day I was dreaming of, and hoping would happen. We finally had a herring bait ball, with a lot of orcas and humpback whales on it. It was super dark and murky and difficult to capture photographs, but damn was it awesome. When we jumped in, we could hear the chaos, even with our hoods on. The orcas were clicking and squealing like crazy. Our boat stayed away from the action and we had to swim to the bait ball. When we got there, it took a little while, swimming in dry suits is a bit of a challenge. It was thick with fish and there was orcas all over it. The light was fading fast, and it was super dark. We found it towards the end of our day, sadly, with not much light left, it made the water even darker than normal. But I didn’t care. Jumping in with a baitball that had orcas and humpbacks on it was everything I dreamed it would be. Of course the humpbacks made it a bit intimidating to be near the baitball.

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We were floating next to the herring ball, watching the orcas below, slamming their tails into it, when all of sudden we felt this pressure rush of water as a humpback swam up and through the bait ball. We could barely see the whale, its white flippers stood out against the dark water, which helped us see it. I looked up and damn was it super close to us. I was on fire with adrenaline from what had just happened, and the fact that we were so close to this massive animal as it swam through, mouth open. DAMN was all I could think. Being in the water with these animals was one of my biggest dreams ever. No words can ever express what I was feeling at that moment.

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The orcas were everywhere I didn’t know where to look. I just snapped away. I knew the images were probably going to be horrible, because it was difficult to see, it was just too dark. As I reviewed my images on the boat, I was bummed that only one sort of came out. A proof of life shot, that I was there. Of course I didn’t care, I was so happy for the experience.

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The water was getting darker and darker, and I decided to get out when I couldn’t see the humpback whales anymore. I sadly pulled myself away from this baitball and back onto the boat. My smile was endless that day. Overall it was an amazing day of orcas with our guests and a huge relief for me. I really wanted a bait ball for them. Yes, we saw orcas everyday, and yes it has been amazing, but it wasn’t spectacular, and it sure wasn’t WOW! I really wanted a wow day for them. Hoping for a wow day tomorrow as well.

Recorded a quick vlog from our day, which shows the orcas on the baitball.

Angles are EVERYTHING…

I have been out photographing a lot this season. I mean, I have been hard at it for the past few seasons but this season I have been working on my craft a lot. I am super happy with where I am at, when it comes to my wildlife photography, I still have a ton to learn and I am loving every second of it. There are so many great wildlife photographers to learn from.  From basic’s like, learning how to use my camera’s features, to composition, to studying behavior for better images. I have been working hard trying to learn it all. It is all uphill, but I am enjoying the climb.

Of course the most important part of learning anything is trying to pass on what you have learned. Just an FYI, nothing I have learned is new. This is info I have learned from better shooters, but my goal is to one day, stand among those giants - and the one thing I know about the greats, is that they love passing on what they have learned. So as I climb my mountain, I will do my best to share tips and tricks along the way.  


So here is my first post on sharing what I have learned about wildlife photography; Perspective; capturing the different angles. When you are photographing wildlife, it is all about where and how you stand, or more to the point, how NOT to stand. By that I mean, getting low, whenever you can.  


When you are photographing a subject, both above and below the water, you can change the look and feel of a photo just by squatting, or kneeling or lying down. Here is an example of what I mean… 


In this first example, I was standing up high on the boat, looking down on the shark when I snapped this image of a breaching white shark. The back ground is just water. It is still a nice shot, but it lacks depth.

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Here is an example of what I mean by getting low. I was at sea level and squatting low on the back diving platform, waiting for this shark to breach on the hang bait. Squatting low meant I could also capture the island in the back ground, giving this breaching image a much different look. 

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Here is another couple of examples of images from different perspectives.

The first is a photo of a great hammerhead from up high and shows the sand around the animal. It is a nice shot, well I like it. But doesn’t show what is around the area, just looks like an empty ocean with a shark cruising along the bottom, which is great, it shows the shark in it’s element. Getting up high sometimes helps to tell a different kind of story.

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However, in this next image, I captured it from a low position, trying to show it from the sharks perspective, sharing what the shark sees. I also played with black and white in this image to try and set a mood. It kind of works.

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So anyway, today’s lesson is about getting low, to change the look and feel of your photos, because when it comes to capturing a nice image… angles are everything.

Hoping this post will help some of you on your photographic journey. I know it helped me learning this little photography tip.

Taking my Daughter Croc Diving!

Oh the critics and there are many… all thinking I am out of my mind for taking my precious 13 year old daughter Sophia, crocodile diving. She is truly an amazing individual and an old soul. She was super nervous about swimming with crocodiles, but it didn’t take long before she was over her fears and was then trying to see how close she could safely get to the crocs. It was fun to watch, she spent a lot of time in the water, more than I dreamed she would, and told her mom upon returning from this trip that it was one of her favorites.

Yes, crocodiles are dangerous predators, but with a lot of respect and by following the rules, you can safely swim with them. And we have been running this trip for 9 years now and hopefully for another nine years after that…

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Introducing people to predatory animals, like crocs is one of my most favorite things to do, and sharing a trip like this with my baby girl is beyond words. Easily one of my most favorite trips I have ever run. But enough from me, I’ll let you watch this video vlog and let her tell you herself. Hope you enjoy.