I wrote this post last year, but the trip is happening again and by some miracle, there are seats open. I might go back. For $2600, including everything but airfare, you should consider going. It’s a non scuba trip, so you’ll be snorkeling, making it ideal for people with partners who don’t dive. I don’t get paid to promote this trip, I just believe these Wetpixel are an amazing way to go on an adventure and learn water photography, so I try to promote them best I can. Here’s how to learn more.

I tagged along on underwater photography site Wetpixel’s whale shark trip to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. You’d expect everyone on the trip to have very big cameras, and some, like Alex Mustard, an editor at Wetpixel, did. (Alex, an englishman who lived in Sardinia with his girlfriend, Eleonora, was an incredible host and guide because he is also a marine biologist.) But others were just there to spend time–hours and hours for days on end–swimming with the sharks above an endless depth. I had only a gopro and an iPhone in a 30-meter hard case, but given the clear skies, clear waters, abundant sharks, and plenty of time in the water, I was able to grab a few lucky shots.

The Captain David “Lato” Gallo, told us how we had to sneak up behind the whale sharks when they were botella, bobbing vertically to eat the fish eggs that we could see floating on the surface. The eggs would get into our hair and dive suits, full body too thin to provide any insulation but designed to keep the sun from burning us to a crisp during our 5-6 hours in the water every day. On the way back, the boat crew would fix us some ceviche. We’d be back by 2 or 3pm for a nap or to explore the island or take a dip in the pool of our hotel, Playa Media Luna.

Over the course of a week, I learned how much better my company was–we would head out so very early in the day to catch the whale sharks at their most active feeding times, and to beat the armada of day boats that would bring the splashing, chasing, awkward tourists in their orange life vests that would get on my nerves as often as they seemed to get on the nerves of the sharks. Everyone on the Wetpixel trip was there to observe the creatures, and record them for eternity in photography.

Many city friends I showed these pictures to said I was lucky to go, and that it was a dream of theirs to swim with whale sharks. I agree, I am lucky and it was a dream of mine, too. But, I don’t know why it has to be just a dream when trips like this one are so easy and so satisfying to sign up for.

Without the need for fancy cameras, or expensive dive equipment beyond a mask and snorkel, dive skin and fins, anyone can swim with the whale sharks.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Photo above by Neil Rosewarn)

Cyrus Sutton will be living out of his ex-electrician’s van and shooting his new surf film, “Compass_ing”, for the next three months.

Watch the trailer for the film, featuring music by the Blank Tapes:

Click here to view the embedded video.

*korduroy*

Click here to view the embedded video.

The deceased, presumably calf to the female bearing her, may have been dead for weeks, according to Capt. Dave Anderson, who noted that the calf’s flesh had begun to decay. Behind the dolphin and calf (not seen in the video clip) were many other dolphins following.

“In my nearly twenty years on the water whale watching”, said Capt. Anderson, “I have never seen this behavior. Nor have I ever seen anything quite as moving as this mother who refuses to let go of her poor calf.” My hat’s off to him for handling the news gently with his passengers.

*petethomasoutdoors via @aquaken*

Huh.

U.S. scientists have announced the first-ever discovery of a two-headed bull shark, confirming it was a single shark with two heads, not conjoined twins.

Photographs and custom-made wooden frames by Cody Welsh, showing now through March 18, 2013 in Ocean Beach, San Francisco

4500 Irving Street, Ocean Beach, San Francisco

View Larger Map

*goodwinproject*

Click here to view the embedded video.

Subglacial Lake Whillans, which has long been buried in ice, sits in one of the most remote areas of the continent. The WISSARD (Willans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling) project designed a baseball bat-sized micro-submarine to be built, mostly by students of the Arizona State University, so that it could withstand depths of up to a kilometer.

*huffingtonpost*

Forbidden Island (Columbia, 1958)

A skin diver tries to recover sunken treasure before a group of thieves learn of its existence. imdb

*adventuresoftheblackgang*

The Larger Pacific Striped Octopus may be the only species of octopus that mates ‘beak to beak’, which poses danger, mostly for males, as the female will often cannibalize her mate after the ritual is complete. 

California Academy of Sciences senior biologist Richard Ross has issued a spare bedroom in his Alameda home to five of these octopi (3 males, 2 females), which were unknown to science until twenty years ago and still have no scientific name but are currently being referred to as the “Larger Pacific Striped Octopus”, whose size, at 8-10 inches, does not quite reflect their name.

Watch the Larger Pacific Striped Octopus change colors:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read more:

*sfgate, via @stevesilberman*

Click here to view the embedded video.

Erick Higuera was awarded the 2013 Stan Waterman Award for Excellence in Underwater Videography for this short film about the tremendous range of biodiversity that exists in the waters of Baja, Mexico, which took him a year to complete.

*adam_hanlon*

Seeking asylum from an uprising of communal violence along the Burma-Bangladesh boarder, 32 Muslim refugees were picked up by Sri Lankan navy reported that their vessel failed at sea and they had gone without food for 21 days. During the course of their months adrift they say that 98 of their crew passed away, and that all of whom were sent to the sea.

Time reports:

“The U.N. estimates that at least 13,000 people fled the borderlands between Burma and Bangladesh by boat in 2012. Of them, 485 are known to have drowned. This deadly tide looks unlikely to recede: at least 1,800 refugees washed up in Thailand in January 2013 alone.”

*timeworld*

Next Tuesday, February 19th, the Son of Rogues Gallery will be releasing a collection of pirate ballads, sea songs and chanteys which will feature Dr. John, Sean Lennon, Ivan Neville, Iggy Pop, Macy Gray, Nick Cave, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Marianne Faithfull and others, including collaborations by Tom Waits and Keith Richards on the traditional “Shenandoah”, and Johnny Depp and Shane MacGowan (of the Pogues) on “Leaving of Liverpool”.

Hear more:

*npr*

*streetartutopia*

A 29-person lifeboat was discovered after it washed ashore in Australia about 2 years and 5,000 miles from the Nightingale Islands (just south of Tristan Da Cunha) where she was deployed after the bulk carrier M.S. Oliva ran aground in March of 2011.

 Bulk carrier MS Oliva, aground in the South Atlantic

Traveling from Brazil to Singapore, the Maltese-registered ship struck the uninhabited island with 1,500 tons of fuel, 65,000 metric tons of soya beans and, of course, one very seaworthy lifeboat.

Unfortunately, the Oliva’s hull has since broken up and she has sunk.

Read more:

*gcaptain and abc.au*

This 25-year-old sea turtle named “Yu” was rescued along the coast of Japan after she may have lost its front fins to a shark. Scientists at the Suma AquaLife park in Kobe have been testing new fittings and after constructing 26 different fins, they may have finally given her a second fighting chance.

Video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

*bbc, news.au*

Myrtos Beach, Kephalonia Island, in the Ionian Sea along the west coast of Greece

*thecoolhunter*