Flower Garden Banks Photo Gallery

Jesse Cancelmo provides a bonus photo gallery of images from Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.

Galápagos

The seven days in the Galápagos went by too quickly, and I was ready to come back before I had even left. The Galápagos National Park and the tour operators greatly respect the destination, and conservation is their primary goal. Even with all the protections in place, the fishing industry, climate change and ocean health pressure the archipelago. Every tourist dollar that goes into the Galápagos adds persuasive emphasis that this is a place that deserves ongoing and stringent protection.

hammerhead shark

Tonga’s Gentle Giants

Humpback whales feed in polar waters during the summer and then migrate to tropical or subtropical waters to breed during winter. Various locations offer seasonal whale-watching, but swimming with them is legal in only a few places — Tonga is one of them. Every year its warm and sheltered waters provide a nursery for the whales, which gather there between July and October after a long migration from Antarctica.

mother humpback whale supports her calf

Calling the Dive

Calling a dive is not as easy as just giving the thumbs-up signal. There are steps to follow after the signal to cancel a dive. The dive briefing should cover these procedures, and the greater the dive’s potential risk, the more attention to detail the procedures and briefing should have to make calling the dive happen as safely as possible.

diver using a safety sausage

Iceland

It’s not every day you can witness the inner workings of our planet by taking a live look under the hood at the engine of creation. Some scientists claim that life on Earth began from hydrothermal vents in the ocean’s abyssal reaches. That realm is much deeper than where I float now, but otherwise it’s […]

Chunks of ice wash up on the black sand at Diamond Beach near Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon

Mexico’s Sardine Run

Although striped marlins (Kajikia audax) are slower than some of their billfish cousins, their 50-mph speed is plenty fast for me. I try to swim alongside this stealth bomber of the sea as it works a baitball to separate individual sardines from the silvery mass. While getting outpaced by sailfish and black marlin might be […]

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Destination Antartica

WHEN I STARTED DIVING, I fell in love with colorful coral reefs and marine life. If you had told me that Antarctica would someday become a favorite destination, I might have laughed and said I’d never …

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Cayman Brac

THE CAYMAN ISLANDS CONSIST OF THREE ISLANDS — Grand Cayman and Little Cayman; Cayman Brac, however, is not as well-known among dive aficionados despite the island’s infrastructure and …

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Vis Island, Croatia

THE CRYSTAL-CLEAR EASTERN ADRIATIC SEA is promising and seductive. The tiny islands, with their rocky beaches, upright cliffs, and hidden lakes, offer a variety of environments and ecosystems that are among the Mediterranean’s most intact and pristine. The southern part of the Adriatic’s Croatian side has steep, rocky plateaus with plenty of bridges, cracks, and caves. The sea has opened gaps in the porous rocks, carving and shaping cathedrals entirely built of limestone. 

A rebreather diver observes a common cuttlefish

Saba

I SUSPECT THAT MY LOVE FOR SABA was set in motion the first time my father threaded King Kong onto our home projector. It was the original black-and-white film from 1933 — and if you’ve never viewed it, you should. I watched, enthralled, from my comfy beanbag chair as a ship carrying a film crew motored through […]

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