Cavis Creative: Seychelles

Summer 2006: Artist Residency & Dive/Marine Volunteer in the Seychelles (Eastern Africa, group of islands in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar). This was an amazing opportunity... I was able to combine my interest and concern for the worlds oceans and my artistic talent on this 6 week long expedition in the Seychelles. Even though there were many fun adventures during my trip - including a flight in a microlight. By far the most amazing thing was swimming with the whale sharks!

I kept a journal during this trip & here's what I wrote that day:
My first whaleshark sighting! Actually, I got to swim with 3 of them.... and one of them was longer than the boat! It was so amazing. We all jumped out of the boat as carefully as possible & headed out to where we had seen a fin pierce the surface. I headed a little further over, hoping to head it of, when all of a sudden out of the blue where I couldn't see much - this huge open mouth is headed straight for me. I hesitate for a moment, trying to decide if I should swim left or right to try to get out of it's way. Just as I decide to go left, it seems to veer a little in the same direction - that gets me moving a little faster. I got off to the side - snapping a couple photos on the way & was able to swim along with it for a good bit until it dove down & I could no longer see it. We all then got back into the boat .... then shortly after, we saw 2 more fins poke up.... we threw our fins & masks back on & hopped back into the water. At one point after swimming with one, I head back closer to the boat & looked down to see 2 swimming up - I had to do some quick maneuvering in order to not be caught between them - one of the 2 was the really big one that was longer than our dive boat! Our dive group couldn't stop talking about it for the rest of the evening. This was so amazing, I almost forgot about the nice big octopus I saw right before that!