When you love to travel, it’s easy to get caught up in where you’re going and planning your travel and itinerary, but you have to keep your health in check. That’s all part of the fun of going on an adventure, whether it’s close to home, like Yosemite, or far away. However, with all that fun, it’s important to be practical about keeping your health in check. There are so many things that can affect our bodies, from long trips to altitude, time changes, and diet changes. [Read more…] about 4 Tips to Keep Your Health in Check While Traveling
Why I’m Glad I went Diving at Night with Sharks on the Great Barrier Reef!
Why I’m Glad I went Diving at Night with Sharks in the Great Barrier Reef!
I am not a stranger to shark diving. My experience with a Great White Shark in Guadalupe Island in 2010 is indicative of that! I’ve been diving with Whale Sharks, Hammerheads, Galapagos Sharks, White Tips, Black Tips, Silkies, nurse sharks and leopard sharks. Somehow though, the idea of diving at night with sharks never occurred to me as a very good idea!
While I was on a trip recently in Komodo National Park, one of my dive mates told me that he had been on the Spirit of Freedom, the boat I was going to be on in the Great Barrier Reef in the next week. He told me about a night dive he was on with sharks, and told me that one of the divers had been bitten. Getting a bite from a shark did not appeal to me even though I love sharks!
Fast forward to the Spirit of Freedom. I really enjoyed the boat, and the crew was fantastic, so when they mentioned the night dive with sharks, I was somewhat prepared. I was not enthusiastic, even when they explained that any bite would have been small!
Although a little nervous, I listened to the dive brief. At this site, the sharks and the trevallys, which are also large fish, use the divers as a means to hunt their prey. When diving at night, divers have lights, or “torches”. These lights are necessary to see during a night dive, and the sharks and trevallys take advantage of these lights to hunt, often hanging with the divers. That seemed to me to be a bit problematic, you know, hungry sharks hunting while humans were present? But you all know me, I said what the hell, and jumped in.
The dive was actually quite fascinating. Seeing the sharks swimming around in the lights was not scary, but exciting! They are so streamlined, the perfect predator. The Trevallys were huge, and actually bumped into divers while they were hunting. To my knowledge, the sharks did not bump into anyone. They paid no attention to the divers, but hung out on the edge of the lighted area, darting in to grab a meal here and there.
Why am I glad I went night diving with sharks? Because it is always a good thing to face your fears (within reason, of course. If you are afraid of guns, I don’t think you should shoot yourself!). These shark species are less intimidating than, say, Bull Sharks or Tiger Sharks. I have a very healthy respect for Bulls and Tigers. I had the chance to dive with Bull Sharks in Cabo Pulmo, an amazing dive area in the Baja of Mexico, and instead of fear, I felt sheer excitement! The night dive with the sharks on Saxon Reef was exciting, and a lot of fun. I would do it again, any time!
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I Had a Close Encounter While Great White Shark Diving in Guadalupe!
Great White Shark Diving mostly takes place in a cage, but there are some people who dive with these animals without the cage. I’m not one of them! The Great White Shark is the ocean’s top predator, and I know that these animals are wild and therefore unpredictable, so I tend to like the idea of having the cage as a barrier! Today is the beginning of Shark Week 2019, so let’s talk about sharks!
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Over 50 Travel Groups can have Outstanding Experiences on an Antarctica Expedition!
Over 50 Travel Groups can have outstanding experiences on an Antarctica Expedition, and I should know, because I have been on one! I traveled with a friend to Antarctica in 2017 on Lindblad’s Explorer, Antarctica: The White Continent, and we were both over 50.
U.S. and Canadian Whale Watching Tour Operators take New Voluntary Stewardship Actions
Whale Watching Tour: Creating a New Whale Sightings App is Just Part of the Effort
San Juan Islands, WA…“Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA) members on both sides of the border will be prioritizing their efforts on watching the abundant Bigg’s killer whales and humpbacks whales, instead of the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW), when this option is available,” says Kelley Balcomb-Bartok, Communications Director for the Pacific Whale Watch Association.
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Our Planet’s Plastic Problem, Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks?
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Our Planet’s Plastic Problem, can an old dog learn new tricks? I think we can, and we definitely need to. This is a problem that exists in all modern cultures, so we all must learn new tricks. The New 2nd Edition of my book, All Fish Faces, just released, and it has great tips for helping our oceans, not just for kids, but for everyone!
We have a problem. A plastic problem. It is a huge problem, a problem in all of our oceans and on all of our continents, and if you aren’t aware of it, you must be living under a rock! I don’t want to go through the data and bore you, so suffice it to say that our planet is overwhelmed with plastic on land and sea. Did you know that animals and humans are ingesting micro-plastics? Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters, often much smaller. They are in our food supply. Some estimate that we eat the equivalent of a credit card a week! If you think that is good for the human body, think again! You can google the data yourself, it is fact, and you cannot argue with facts. If you are a parent or a grandparent and care about your children, learn to teach an old dog new tricks!
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