As the wheels touched down at Havana’s International airport, the plane erupted with cheers and applause. Many of the passengers on board had waited years, if not decades, to return home and visit relatives in Cuba. As part of a small group of Americans visiting for the first time, I knew immediately that we were in for a special treat.
Trekking Canada’s Sub-Arctic Region in Manitoba
very now and then I get an assignment close to home, which means my dive buddy and I can usually load up the car with dive and photography gear, and maybe a kayak or two, and head out for a full weekend of adventurous exploring. If the location is exceptional, like an assignment to dive in Washington State’s San Juan Islands, we often allocate several days to experience all that’s available.
Okinawa—simply saying the name has so many connotations. The island itself is huge, and yet it’s an oceanic island far from the Asian continent. It takes two and half hours to fly from Hong Kong, the closest point on mainland China, to get here.
For best viewing of the massive numbers, head to Jupiter on the eastern coast of Florida. Groupers travel from as far away as Fort Myers and northeast Florida for the spawning events on wrecks and reefs. The window of opportunity to dive with these large fish in these high numbers is quite small. Most of the fish are gone by mid-October, but some remain year round. Goliath groupers can reach up to 800 pounds and were nearly fished out in the 1970s and 80’s, but have made a strong comeback under a protection ban that was established in 1990.
There are very few places in the world that remain unknown to the dive community. Let’s face it, scuba enthusiasts are nothing if not resourceful when it comes to finding new and uncharted waters to dive in. But chances are excellent that when you read the title of this article you asked yourself, “Buyat Bay? Where the heck is that?”
The world’s full of triangles. There’s the Love Triangle, the Golden Triangle, the Bermuda Triangle… and then of course, most relevant of all to us divers, there’s the Macrolife Triangle, that blissful figure made up by the Malaysian islands of Lankayan and Kapalai and—at the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi—the Strait of Lembeh.
Whale shark, whale shark, whale shark! After several unsuccessful hours of searching the bay by small boat, these long-awaited words came as a welcome relief. Only a handful of us had heard the radio call after opting to stay behind and skip the last dive of the trip.
Arus kencang are the words you need to listen out for—you will hear them in the rapid interchange between the dive guides and the boat boys, as they discuss the practicalities of safely immersing a group of “bule” (slang for foreigners) in the waters of Raja Ampat.
Arus kencang means strong current in Bahasa Indonesia, and the emphasis given to those two words will give you an instant insight into what awaits you below.
Swirling unicorn fish surround me and seem to have accepted me as one of their own. I can no longer see the surface nor anything else, save for a wall of fish. Only four minutes into the dive and it’s already evident that this site is living up to its reputation, literally boiling with fish. Moments like this remind me why I dive.
