Crystal River / February 16, 2015 by Felix Leander

Three Sisters - Manatees and Noodlers. Image by Manuel Menendez

Just 4.5 hours north of Miami, Crystal River becomes the home to hundreds of manatees during the Florida winters. Last weekend a group of us ventured up for a quick getaway and interactions with the sea cows. Raul Boesel Jr., Manuel Menendez and I packed our better halves, children, dogs, and of course equipment to capture what we thought would only be manatees.

There are two ways to dive in Crystal River - guided tours (with a bunch of "noodlers" - people that have never been in the water that use pool noodles to float) or renting your own boat / pontoon, of course we went with the latter. There are several locations worth visiting - the most popular being Three Sisters. The Florida Fish and Wildlife has a strong presence there to ensure the manatees are not molested by the noodlers + control the access to the spring. We were lucky enough that access to the springs was granted as it has been closed for most of the season since there has been such a large gathering of manatees.

Each of us had an idea of what we wanted to capture:

Raul testing rear sync flash set-up motion blur (more on that soon)
Manuel to get aerial pics with his drone
Me - video of manatees / other

And while we did capture what we wanted to - we also found subject matters what we never expected to see such as a school of hundreds of Snook, mangrove snappers, and morning fog. The results of the trip are below...

Mangrove snappers.  Image by Raul Boesel Jr — Mangrove snappers. Image by Raul Boesel Jr

Video of Manatees, Snapper, and Snook while freediving in Crystal River, FL using a GoPro. Video by Felix Leander

Manatee and Lala.  Image by Manuel Menendez — Manatee and Lala. Image by Manuel Menendez

It is definitely worth a trip up and expect great southern hospitality when you go out to eat.

Reef Worlds / February 12, 2015 by Felix Leander

Patric Douglas has been "gone" for a while - at least from the shark diving industry. I have only seen a few sporadic posts here and there on Facebook, but it seems like he has been really busy. Patric was part of the "old school" (not that old either) shark industry and had a loud voice. Some liked him and others hated him for it - while we did not always see eye-to-eye there were several thing we could agree on. (Even though he once removed our blog from his blog list - no hard feelings)

One of my favorite projects that Patric worked on was Shark Free Marina - which now seems to have rebranded itself as Shark Friendly Marina --- a great effort to promote shark conservation at a local level that grew organically. Patric is now working on a new project - not shark related, but ocean related.

Reef Worlds in Patric's words: "Near shore resort reefs are in severe decline around the world. This is best exampled by the Caribbean where close to 80% of reefs are in decline or gone completely.

What *if* resorts around the world treated their near shore reefs as they did with their landscaping, what if they actually considered the oceans past the high tide mark offering an estimated 500 million tourists each year a chance to interact, become educated, and save the oceans at the same time?

To accomplish this resorts would need an incentive. Their new house reefs would have to be fully monetized because resort developers and resort management companies like Starwood do not do anything that does not add to the bottom line - and rightfully so."

I think Patric is on to something...make sure you follow his new blog (will not be a fire-started) and Reef Worlds.

Ocean Gravity / February 3, 2015 by Felix Leander

A few years ago we were treated to the awesome video of freediver Guillaume Néry "base jumping" of a cliff in Dean's Blue Hole in The Bahamas directed by Julie Gautier. Now the duo has released another video of Néry floating through the ocean while riding underwater currents in an area close to Tahiti. I would love to see this team release a freediving / shark video...

Tiger Shark Research / February 2, 2015 by Felix Leander

The RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program is conducting research on tiger sharks in The Bahamas (particularly Tiger Beach) to study their movement patterns and reproduction. The study is looking to answer several questions including:

Are tiger sharks using TB as a mating ground, feeding area or gestation ground? If not, where are these critical areas?
What are the overall residency patterns of sharks within TB?
Does dive tourism affect tiger shark behavior and movements at TB? If so, how?
How much movement is there in and out of TB? What are the migrations patterns of tiger sharks in the subtropical Atlantic?
How much time are tiger sharks remaining in the Bahamas Shark Sanctuary? If they move out the Sanctuary, where and when are the sharks most vulnerable to fishing exploitation?
How are shark movement patterns influenced by their body condition and health?

The research is being led by Neil Hammerschlag and his team. It will be extremely interesting what the results will yield, particularly if shark diving tourism in the area has an effect on the sharks. Many have theories - but none have been proven.

For more information visit University of Miami's website - and find out about all the other projects that the University is working on.