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The First Dive on the Kittiwake -Grand Cayman

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The Worlds Rarest Birds photo competition

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Great Reading ! North Atlantic Right Whale Watch

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Sea World, Orlando, Florida

Our last day before driving back to Toronto, we spent at Sea World in Orlando. Any visit to a zoo or aquarium raises again in my mind the ongoing debate of the role these facilities play towards conservation, and the captivity of animals and fish away from their natural surroundings. In this case killer whales or orcas are a great example. Although much of Sea World seems to be set-up for pure entertainment value and to bring in the crowds, we certainly left enthusiastic and touched by some of the great exhibits. I am still convinced that these places offer opportunities to people that would not otherwise have any chance of seeing these creatures in the wild, and at least get some exposure to conservation challenges and the importance of these ecological systems to the world. Sea World obviously plays a big role in conservation, the manatee exhibit being an example, where injured manatees are captured and looked after and maybe released. In addition, the successful breeding of killer whales over many years has contributed significantly to the understanding of the species and to the conservation of the killer whale populations in the wild. Some exhibits literally brought tears to our eyes, including the young killer whale calf born Oct, 2010.

Scuba Diving - Key Largo, Florida

Late December, we joined thousands of other Canadian "snowbirds" heading south for part of the winter, this time to central and southern Florida. For the first few days we didn't escape the cold at all, wearing our canadian winter jackets on the dive boat off-shore from Key Largo, the sea warmer than the air temperature ! Apart from the first dive, the remaining four were great. Every dive location seems to operate in different ways, and this time, Heather and I were able to do our own thing once we had left the boat, exploring at our own pace. For the first time in our diving careers, we were able to look and appreciate the life on the coral reefs at our own pace. The dives were reasonably shallow on Molasses Reef, a maximum of 40 feet, but the fish life was awesome and plentiful. We had bottlenose dolphins swim past the dive boat, a nurse shark and hawsbill turtle sighting underwater, and numerous barracuda, along with plentiful reef fish.