Posted in Q-and-A, Snorkeling on Oct 24th, 2009 No Comments »
Bobbie Martin, a Program Manager for Zegrahm Expeditions, WWF’s tour operator for our Rain Forests and Reefs expedition, shares her thoughts on the voyage, which she accompanied in 2009. What was the highlight of the expedition? Panama! I am completely taken with this country. From the beautiful beaches of Escudo de Veraguas, and its endemic [...]
Posted in Snorkeling on Oct 19th, 2009 3 Comments »
Gina DeFerrari is a Senior Policy Advisor for WWF. Gentle giants. That’s what pops into my head each time I think about being in the water, swimming alongside a whale sharks. The first time I did it – two summers ago – it was the experience of a lifetime: Swimming six feet away from one [...]
Posted in Snorkeling on Oct 12th, 2009 No Comments »
Paulina Grove traveled on 2008’s Rain Forests & Reefs tour to Central America. Here’s what she wrote about Half Moon Caye and Lighthouse Reef off the coast of Belize: Just after breakfast, the divers of our group had an orientation with the dive master, and soon were headed out to one of Belize’s amazing natural [...]
Posted in Photography, Snorkeling on Oct 6th, 2009 No Comments »
The third in an occasional series about nature and wildlife photography. All photos © Thomas & Natalya Baechtold/Raw Perspectives Of the wide-ranging variety of subjects you could photograph on a nature tour, marine life may be the most daunting. In fact, only 10 percent of all travelers take photos underwater on snorkeling and scuba diving [...]
Posted in Q-and-A, Snorkeling on Oct 1st, 2009 No Comments »
How many travel experiences can honestly, truly be defined as “surreal?” Few come close to the extraordinary experience of slipping into a quiet, dark lake with millions of marmalade-colored jellyfish on the rock island of Eil Malk in Palau. Known locally as Ongeim’l Tketau, the isolated saltwater lake was once connected to the ocean by [...]
Posted in Photography, Snorkeling on Sep 19th, 2009 No Comments »
“The trip leader Ron Leidich took this photograph of me providing scale to the some of the enormous table corals that we encountered at the Mergui Archipelago. This area was off-limits to foreigners until recently and has seen little activity beyond fishing. The many small islands provide shelter and myriad current and wave conditions – [...]
Posted in Snorkeling on Aug 4th, 2009 1 Comment »
Skimming water above a coral reef off Ngeruktabel Island in the Republic of Palau, Ron Leidich takes a deep breath and free dives 35 feet to the sea floor. Snorkel mask strapped on, he’s gripping a stick that looks more like a sharpened broom handle than an important tool in marine conservation. Leidich, a biologist [...]
Posted in Snorkeling on Jul 13th, 2009 No Comments »
Just added! Tour four Central American countries and a Colombian island as you travel across two oceans and through the Panama Canal on our newly added Rain Forest & Reefs voyage January 3-17, 2010. Traveling aboard the well-appointed expedition ship Le Levant, you’ll explore rain forests by Zodiac and on foot, go snorkeling right [...]
Posted in Photography, Snorkeling on Jun 11th, 2009 No Comments »
“During our cruise through the sparsely uninhabited Mergui Archipelago, we almost always had the reefs to ourselves, sometimes passing fishing boats en route to the next snorkeling adventure. Several times we had observed the activities of the Moken people from a distance. “These nomadic people, also referred to as sea gypsies, spend most of their [...]