Most fans of big animal action are familiar with the legendary Galápagos, Cocos, and Socorro dive destinations. All are remote and remarkable. Far fewer people know of — let alone have dived — another open-ocean oasis in the eastern tropical Pacific region: Isla Malpelo.
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.
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.
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 …
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 …
THE LONG, STRANGE TRIP OF THE Spiegel Grove began in 2001 over beers at Sharkey’s Bar in Key Largo, Florida. Several Bibb and Duane shipwrecks project organizers were musing about what they would do …
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 […]