A few months ago Les Fruits de Mer co-founders Madam J and Mark AuMarc were awesome enough to host a private screening of Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s documentary The Silent World. The 1956 film follows the adventures of Cousteau’s oceanographic team aboard his research vessel Calypso as they explore the underwater world of the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. As one of the first feature-length films to use full-color underwater cinematography, The Silent World wowed audiences with its vibrant depiction of aquatic life, winning an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Palme d’Or award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. The jaw-dropping opening shot follows Cousteau’s team as they plummet headfirst down a » read more «

In a previous article I wrote about my fifth favorite dive site on Roatan, the El Aguila shipwreck. It was intended to be a top-five countdown of my favorite sites around the island. Unfortunately, rum and procrastination formed a cocktail of laziness that drown said article into development hell. Since then, I’ve had the fortune of diving around the Roatan’s south side near Dixon Cove, Fantasy Island/CocoView, and Oakridge. In my 1200+ dives on this island, I thought I had seen everything. I was wrong. Roatan’s south side has a completely different charm than the West End’s north shores: sheer walls, stunning sponges, and minuscule macro life on the south replace the serene sandy shallows, mountainous coral mounds, and swarming » read more «