I know what’s coming. As I exit through an opening in the lava-rock cavern called First Cathedral — a popular dive off the Hawaiian island of Lanai — I hear the high-pitched din of clicks and squeaks building above the noise of my bubbles. A pod of spinner dolphins is approaching, the volume of chatter signals that more than a few are heading my way.

My gut tells me the dolphins will pass through the sand channel alongside the cavern. So, I make a hard right, swimming fast, before I dump the air from my BC, plant my knees on the seafloor and lock my gaze west down the length of the channel.

For about three minutes, the sound grows. Then, just as the cacophony crescendos, the pack leaders swoop into the mini canyon at the edge of my visibility like an undulating bullet train that’s just jumped the tracks. They move in a tight formation, a seemingly endless line. Individuals occasionally break from the crowd, careening down to skim the seafloor, or bolting for the surface.

This is Hawaiian big-animal diving at its best. Many divers link Hawaii synonymously with humpback whales, which congregate there every winter. But most will never see these behemoths below the surface. More common — and more exciting when they arrive en masse — are encounters with the resident spinner dolphins that cruise the coastline year-round, sometimes in pods hundreds of acrobatic animals deep. To be graced with this experience requires about 90 percent luck, because interaction is at the dolphins’ discretion. Make no mistake: These animals are clever, rarely approaching divers by accident. What’s the other 10 percent of the encounter? A mix of awareness and attitude. Divers must first recognize the pod’s approach in time to get into position, and second, avoid any action — swimming after or trying to touch the animals — that will scare the pod.

From my vantage point on the seafloor, I watch the pod, which is some 150 to 200 strong, perform the eponymous spins and loop-the-loops unique to this wild species. They disappear above the surface only to dip back in to perform another curling maneuver underwater. The mothers display less bravado as they swim down the middle of the pod, casting protective glances toward their calves in tow. After maybe seven minutes, even the stragglers pass. The chatter fades and the whole impressive display disappears just as quickly as it arrived.

Download full article

]]> http://www.travis-marshall.com/2009/09/28/bullet-train/feed/ 0 http://www.travis-marshall.com/2009/05/13/into-the-labyrinth/ http://www.travis-marshall.com/2009/05/13/into-the-labyrinth/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 15:42:38 +0000 Travis Marshall http://www.travis-marshall.com/?p=590
]]>

Gearing up on the platform for my last dive of the trip, I peer into the electric-blue water trying to visualize the winding path we plan to follow as Scott “Bear” Fritz, my fast-talking dive guide, fires off directions. “We’ll drop down this pillar here,” he gestures with his right hand. “At about 80 feet you’ll see a small opening. That’s the Secret Tunnel. It’s off the regular dive path, but it’ll get us to the Lake Room in a matter of minutes. From there we’ll follow the wall to the tar boat, go up a set of ladders through Clinton Shaft, follow the railroad ties into the Grand Canyon Bowl and loop back around into the Lake Room.” “Pheew,” I think, “OK, I’ve got it…maybe.” But then he starts talking again, “Then we’ll turn and swim through the Rope Room, pass through the Trail 3 slit into the 1095 Bowl and we’re back to the dock.” My mouth hangs open slightly. “Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll just stay right behind you.”

It’s a good choice. There’s no better guide to Missouri’s Bonne Terre Mine. Fritz has been diving the mine for more than 20 years, and he’s the training director who makes sure all the mine’s dive guides are fully prepared to take tourists or students into this underwater maze. There are more that 50 planned trails open to the public that the guides must know like the backs of their hands. Though, under special circumstances, exploratory dives are possible here as well. Dubbed “Bear” trails, these more advanced dives, lead by the eponymous guide himself, delve into the unlit and underexplored sections of the mine. But Bear Trails, like the one I’m about to dive, are only for divers who prove they’ve got the scuba skills and the air consumption to do them, and once we drop down the aforementioned pillar and enter the Secret Tunnel, I understand why.

We slide one-by-one into the narrow, square-cut shaft under a hundred feet of rock. Along the floor, a pair of metal ore-cart tracks stretches past the edges of our high beams. It’s easy to imagine men in this tunnel, urging stubborn mules hitched to ore carts, lugging load after endless load to the edge of this shaft, tipping the cart over the lip, sending a shower of ore into the bowels of the machine. But imagination time doesn’t last long. When we emerge on the other side, we’re in an unlit chamber, a cavernous void that swallows the beam of my light, and I focus on the bottom to maintain a point of reference until we reach the opposite end, and yet another square-shaped passage. This one is wider than the last, and we swim side-by-side until we arrive at Clinton Shaft, a system of round, tight tunnels, angling different directions as they traverse upward through multiple levels, with fragile wooden ladders leading from one hole to the next. Bear points his hand-mounted light into the narrow shaft and motions me forward. “Here we go,” I say to myself as I fin carefully up the length of the ladders, following, in the still silence, the footsteps of men who lived and died to create this labyrinth in the name of industry.

This is the lure of what the Bonne Terre crew has dubbed “deep earth diving,” a seemingly endless underground world, frozen in time. Fritz openly admits he has “the fever,” a driving desire to explore, to see what’s down the next tunnel, that has kept him coming back for more than two decades. Pillars, shafts, sheer walls and ceilings—hewn entirely by human hands—stretch for miles in all directions, leaving a sprawling, five-level catacomb beneath the town, and at every underwater turn all manner of artifacts—shovels, rock drills, ore carts and blasting caps—lay strewn across the landscape, as if the workers who left them simply went home at the blow of the foreman’s whistle and never returned to clean up after themselves. Of course, back in the day, the mine’s deepest reaches were not underwater. A massive pump system stemmed the flow of encroaching groundwater as the miners pushed ever deeper. But when this, the world’s largest lead mine, was all mined out, the men retreated, the pumps were turned off and the water trickled in to fill the void. These days, mine owners Doug and Cathy Georgens have turned the pumps back on, but it was never their intention to drain the mine completely, just enough to keep the water level constant and provide divers with access to their unique underwater vision.

And a big part of what makes that vision possible is light. The electric blue of the water is a product of the 500,000 watts of high-powered stadium lighting that the Georgens and their team have strung from pillar to pillar, through hundreds of feet of subterranean air space. The crystal-clear, rock-filtered water is clean enough to drink, and the long, blue waves of light that penetrate to the darkest depths of the motionless, billion-gallon lake lend an almost Caribbean illusion. But that illusion disperses as fast as your body heat when you make that first giant stride. Bonne Terre’s dive deck hovers on the water’s surface a full 150 feet into the earth, and though it’s a short walk down from the small shed that covers the mine’s only opening, the environmental change is complete. From the searing Missouri summer heat, it’s like entering the world’s largest walk-in refrigerator, where the air stays a constant 62 degrees, the water a brisk 58, year round.
Of course, those temps sound pretty good during the winter, which is Bonne Terre’s high season. Here in the Midwest, regional dive shops are short on spots to take Open-Water classes, especially when the quarry temperatures dip below freezing. So Bonne Terre Mine’s constant conditions provide year-round diving opportunities for students and divers who don’t have the time, money or desire to go coastal. But the mine has also attracted higher-profile attention. In 1983, Jacques Cousteau’s film team came to document the dramatic underwater scenery, in April 2000, “National Geographic Adventure” named the diving at Bonne Terre Mine one of the top 10 adventures in America, and over the years, a handful of documentaries have been filmed here and shown on the Discovery and History channels.

For everyday divers, the diving experience at Bonne Terre is very accessible. The town of Bonne Terre, Mo., is about an hour’s drive south of St. Louis. The dive operation is only open on weekends, and there are on-site accommodation options. The diving itself is totally safe because it is highly controlled—a necessary precaution in a place with innumerable overhead tunnels that can easily swallow even an experienced diver who doesn’t know his or her way around. Every group of divers has a guide and a safety diver, and every diver’s first visit to the mine starts with a checkout dive, no matter what their experience level. Visitors to the mine dive the 24 trails in sequence—they get a bit a harder as the numbers get larger—so if you make it through Trail 6 your first weekend, you’ll start at Trail 7 on your next visit. Dive lights are not allowed or necessary on the guided tours.

As for me, following Fritz around for a weekend proves a very tempting taste of what the mine has to offer. As we exit Clinton Shaft, I stay right on Fritz’s fin straps through the winding path back to the dock. Like an enthusiastic newbie, I turn my head in all directions—from rock walls and narrow passageways, to discarded drill bits and shovels—trying to take it all in, but at one point, we swim onto a ledge and Fritz stops me short. He puts his hand on my shoulder and points out into what looks like open water. Then he kicks his fins out in front of him, leans back and sits down on a rock like a man settling into his favorite easy chair. He looks over at me and spreads his arms wide. By this time, my eyes have focused, and I see pillar after pillar stretching out into the soft light like a massive forest marching into the distance; I settle down beside him to admire the scene. “That’s my favorite spot, where I go to relax” Fritz says when we climb out of the water. “We call it the Redwood Forest.” I nod my head in agreement, looking back over my shoulder at the water. Fritz laughs, “Looks like you’re getting the fever,” he says. “You’ll be back.”

Download Shortened Version Published in Scuba Diving magazine

From the Philippines to the Solomon Islands, the Coral Triangle is the world’s hottest region for on-the-fringe diving, underwater photography, big animal encounters and so much more. Get the who, what, when, where and why of diving the Amazon rainforest of the seven seas.

Download full article

]]> http://www.travis-marshall.com/2009/05/01/cracking-the-coral-triangle/feed/ 0 http://www.mensjournal.com/whale-sharks http://www.mensjournal.com/whale-sharks#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:08:49 +0000 Travis Marshall http://www.travis-marshall.com/?p=573 Men’s Journal Magazine, Apr. 2009

WHEN YOU SLIP INTO THE OCEAN AND SWIM NEXT TO A whale shark, it’s the underwater equivalent of going on safari, then getting out of the Land Rover and running with elephants. Shark spotters in search of this ultimate in-water encounter travel far and wide for a chance to dwarf themselves next to these massive creatures. In spite of their status as the world’s largest fish -they grow as long as 50 feet-the animals are shy and spend much of their lives hidden from view. But in spring and summer the big-mouthed behemoths arrive en masse to feed at a few choice locations in the western Caribbean and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, Texas

An oasis of life in the center of an oceanic desert, the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary lies about 110 miles off the coast of Freeport, Texas-so no passport needed. The area attracts a slew of creatures and boasts such unique animal life that in 1992 it became one of 14 federally protected marine areas.

WHEN TO GO: Whale shark sightings at the Flower Gardens aren’t as common as at locations farther south, but a good time to try is in August and September. WHO TO GO WITH: Because the site lies so far offshore, the best way to experience it is on a live-aboard boat. Fling Charters offers two-and three-day trips (four and five days during coral spawning) aboard its 100-foot dive boat, the MV Fling (from $805; flingcharters.com). Trips include two to five dives a day, meals, and snacks.

Isla Holbox, Mexico

Each summer hundreds of whale sharks congregate off this island to feed on plankton blooms. Isla Holbox sits just a few hours’ drive northwest of Cancun, yet the atmosphere in this fishing community is a world away from its developed neighbor. There are no cars on the island; the only motorized transportation is a golf cart.

WHEN TO GO: May to September WHO TO GO WITH: Holbox Tours and Travel offers money back guarantees on snorkeling encounters from June through August (from $95; holboxwhalesharktours.com), making this destination your surest bet. WHERE TO STAY: Casa Iguana is a private beachside retreat surrounded by palm groves (from $55; casa-iguana.net). WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK: Edelyn’s, a hopping pizzeria, is located in front of the main square. Fill up on Chef Miguel’s signature lobster pizza, and when you’re finished, walk to local hangout Habana Nights for a nightcap.

Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras

Along Utila Town’s dusty roads, guesthouses and dive shops tout the seasonal appearance of the island’s biggest attractions: whale sharks. These giants feed on plankton blooms by following schools of tuna. Watch for fish “boiling” at the water’s surface: There’s a good chance you’ll find a whale shark circling underneath.

WHEN TO GO: February to June; August to October, WHERE TO STAY: Get an all-inclusive room and dive package (a great deal) at Utila Lodge, and hop on the boat straight from your waterfront bungalow along the private dock (from $209 per night; utilalodge.com), WHERE TO DRINK: At the Tranquila Bar, an open-air tavern suspended over the water, island expats and backpackers come together to down Flor de Cana rum and deconstruct the day’s dives.

Gladden Spit Marine Reserve, Placencia, Belize

Belize’s Mesoamerican barrier reef, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, lies just off Placencia’s shore and offers stunning natural scenery: The Gladden Spit Marine Reserve, a vital section of the reef, hosts the annual spawning of more than 25 species of fish. During the full-moon spawning, whale sharks gorge themselves on clouds of eggs and sperm. Sign up early: Tours fill up months in advance.

WHEN TO GO: March to June WHERE TO STAY AND DIVE: The Inn at Robert’s Grove boasts a dive center with a fleet of fast boats that dock on 22 acres of beachfront property five miles from Placencia Village (from $240 per night; robertsgrove.com). TOPSIDE ADVENTURES: Placencia makes a perfect base for jungle trekking up the Monkey River, exploring the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary (the world’s first jaguar preserve), and hiking the Mayan ruins of Lubaantun.

Download full article

Ten tips for trouble-free dive travel.

Download full article

From the planning stages to post-trip symptoms, here’s how to stay safe abroad.

Download Full Article