Capturing the Moment

  What a week for sharks here in Hawaii! On our first snorkel at Shark Fin Rock, our small boat noticed a dolphin about 30ft away from me at the surface. So I quickly headed that way. I caught a glimpse of it as it swam away, but then was happy to see another headed my way. However, I quickly realized it was not another dolphin, it was a big pelagic shark! It looked like a sandbar shark while I was in the water, but after looking at the photos I'm not quite sure.  I followed it for a minute, then it turned right towards me. I snagged a couple of photos with my little olympus tough waterproof point and shoot camera. Rare encounter with a large shark off in the blue. This was a about a six to seven foot shark swimming with me. Seeing white tip reef sharks is much more common for snorkelers around Hawaii. We saw six of them at our snorkel spots this week! It is still rare to find even white tips, I was pretty excited. I've been checking under this ledge at Kealakekua Bay all seas...

8 foot Hammerhead Shark encounter   Any time I get to swim and photograph sharks I get pretty excited. I have traveled around the world just to have shark encounters, like shark cage diving with great whites in Africa, to shark feeding frenzies in Fiji , thresher sharks in the Philippines , and even a wild shark dive off the east coast of Florida . You can follow the links to see photos from all of those dives. But I get really excited when I just happen upon a shark which is exactly what occurred yesterday off the lava rock coastline of south Kona.    We had just wrapped up a wonderful snorkel in Kealakekua Bay, near Captain Cook on the Big Island. As we motored our zodiac around the corner we were about to pick up speed when we spotted a large pale grey shadow just under the surface. It was big so I immediately knew it was something special...maybe a manta ray or even a small whale shark. I quickly grabbed my fins and mask, slid off the boat into the water, and ...

   The oceanic white tip shark, ( Carcharhinus longimanus) can often be encountered swimming with pods of short fin pilot whales off the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. They are present in all tropical seas and responsible for most of the injuries and deaths during big shipwreck and airwreck disasters, like that of the USS Indianapolis in 1945 made famous in the retelling in the movies Jaws.       I have swam with these sharks on two different occasions and both times the curiousity of the shark was evident. You can see in the video how the shark is not scared at all, and swims right towards me. This is how it checks to see just how easy a meal this new creature might be. I take solace in the fact that I also appear as a predator, with my eyes facing forward and swimming with confidence, in the crystal clear Hawaiian waters.   There are often small pilot fish that hover around these sharks, picking up morsels of food that the sharks di...

Your Best Source of Local Info No Swimming Allowed   I just returned from one of the most dangerous surfing spots in the world. Reunion Island has crystal clear tropical water with ultra-consistent waves, however the world class waves like St. Leu are going unridden. There are the typical dangers of powerful waves breaking over a razor sharp shallow reef (I am still  nursing a few scrapes and cuts), but this is not why thy lineups are empty. There have been 19 shark attacks since 2013 along the west coast of Reunion Island, and surfers seem to be the main target. Residents, surfers, and concerned politicians have tried everything from shark nets to enforcing an all-out ban on surfing. Lifeguards now act more as beach monitors, making sure no one goes into the water. Surfers however, are surfers through and through and will still find ways to go out. After a short respite from the attacks the surf community was rattled again a month ago as a surfer lost an arm a...

Kelly looking pumped Heidi hovering over the colorful reef   I realized recently that I've gone scuba diving all around the world, on four different continents, but the closest I have come to diving in the Atlantic Ocean was Puerto Rico...which is still pretty much the Caribbean. This all sounded pretty crazy to me since I grew up in Savannah, GA right on the Atlantic Ocean! But I also grew up not hearing about anyone diving in the murky, organic ocean water there. Even though I have spent countless hours and days playing in the ocean water of the Atlantic its underwater world has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Nate and Kelly to the rescue! Fish and diver Shark heading towards Nate    While Heidi and I were planning our Florida road trip to see our friends in Miami, Nate mentioned a possible shark dive while we were there. I had definitely heard of a muck dive spot in Jupiter called the Blue Heron Bridge but a shark dive was news to me. It didn't ...

  One of the amazing parts of taking a boat between the Hawaiian islands on this amazing Un-Cruise itinerary is the ability to see how unique the islands are both above and below the water. This past week we snorkeled near the southernmost point of the United States, at night with manta rays, on a partially submerged volcanic crater, and over the wreckage left behind from a huge hurricane back in the early 90's. It was among this wreckage of the old Mala Pier off Maui's west side that we completed the snorkel wildlife trifecta, turtle, shark, and a ray!   Hawaiian green sea turtles often hover over the wreckage of Mala pier to let tangs and surgeonfish have a chance to clean off their algae covered shells. The turtles hover a few feet over the wreckage and all of us would watch as fish would calmly swim up to grab a free meal as they cleaned off the turtle's shell.    The wreckage also provides a hiding spot for resting white tip reef sharks. Scuba divers some...

Mala Pier  The sun was out and the wind was light as usual on Maui's west side. This bode well for a couple of scuba dives that I had planned to show off a bit of the Hawaiian underwater world to my friend Corie. The first spot we hit up was the wreckage of the old Mala pier, just north of Lahaina. This has always been one of my favorite sites to dive for underwater photography. The water here is almost always clear, the wreckage covered in beautiful coral, and charismatic megafauna abounds.  Bleached Coral Head  Imagine my surprise when I drop down and the first thing I see isn't clouds of fish, or turtles, or beautiful colors....it is a big vibrant white coral. It had almost entirely bleached. There has been a lot of news surrounding Maui lately with the increase in water temperature leading to mass bleaching events around the island. This happens whenever something like increased water temperature, sedimentation, acidification stresses the coral causing it ...