Moorea… The Better Island than Tahiti

The Island of Moorea, truly one of the most visually stunning places I’ve seen, let alone been to in person. Eight massive, jungle covered peaks extend out of the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Coral reefs wrap around the entire island, creating turquoise blue lagoons that surround the beaches on this paradise. Sharks and turtles navigate in and out of the lagoons, across their homes within healthy coral reefs. And if it wasn’t already amazing enough, you could stay in a bungalow on the water, for $100 a night! Too good to be true? As much as it seems like …

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Dream Trip to the Islands of Tahiti & Moorea | VIDEO

This year, my wife and I escaped the historic winter in Utah to French Polynesia to the islands of Tahiti and Moorea. We were shocked to see how much different this island chain was compared to Hawaii. This place is drastically more beautiful and far less developed. The diving with Black-tip Reef Sharks were unbelievable, the food with its French influence was amazing, and of course, this place looks (and is) truly a paradise! Throughout the week, we stayed in small little cottages just a stones throw, or sometimes even on, the water. Every day, we went snorkeling, hung out …

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Scuba Diving with Sharks & Turtles on the Island of Moorea in Tahiti (VIDEO)

Getting to dive with Black Tip Reef Sharks was a dream come true, and not just one, but a handful that surrounded us throughout our dives! This island is a true paradise that hasn’t been corrupted by tourism or resource extraction. Tahiti and Moorea was pure beauty both above and below the water! I cannot recommend this dive enough. Enjoy watching the video, as it’s the closest I can try to share the experience with you! Even watching it over again, has transported me back below the water and surrounded by those beautiful sharks again! The two dive shops that …

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Thailand SCUBA Liveaboard Experience: Days 2 & 3

Wake up, dive #1, eat breakfast, dive #2, eat lunch dive #3, snack, dive #4, dinner and beers, go to sleep, and repeat. This pretty much sums up the average day on a liveaboard dive boat. As you can imagine, the purpose of liveaboard is to dive as much as possible from sun-up to sun-down, and even sometimes at night! We chose to go through Similan 7 Seas Diving Shop (No Troubles Just Bubbles), aboard the MV Lapat, which offered a 3 day 2 night liveaboard trip that would take us from Lamu Pier, near Khaolak, to the Similan Islands …

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Thailand SCUBA Liveaboard Experience: Day #1

Wake up, dive #1, eat breakfast, dive #2, eat lunch dive #3, snack, dive #4, dinner and beers, go to sleep, and repeat. This pretty much sums up the average day on a liveaboard dive boat. As you can imagine, the purpose of liveaboard is to dive as much as possible from sun-up to sun-down, and even sometimes at night! And even though my wife, Courtney, has been diving for 20 years, this was both of our first experiences on a liveaboard dive boat, and to add to this, it was going to be off the coast of Phuket, Thailand …

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SCUBA Diving with Nurse Sharks | Florida Keys

This past summer, I accomplished a bucket-list item of mine, going SCUBA diving sharks! It was a complete surprise to me, slightly terrifying, but overall peaceful! Swimming along side these creatures, I’ve never felt more sure of an animal’s place in this world. What I mean by that, is sharks do not swim anything like a typical fish. They are calm, collected, and at a moments notice can swim in any direction with complete ease and grace. And throughout that entire dive, I was fascinated by these grey creatures and couldn’t take my eyes off them. This was our second …

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Exploring Town of Kihei on the Island of Maui, Hawaii

Kihei, on the island of Maui, Hawaii, was significantly less touristy than Lahaina. And that is a good thing! It really seemed like this was the place people actually “lived” on the island if they were outside the big city Kahului. Of course there was a main town center, but this town really seemed to have the beach as the main focus for being here. The town stretched for miles along the coast facing due west, which led to some incredible sunsets each night. We went scuba diving right off the beach, even went surfing. Our time in Kihei was …

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Exploring The Florida Keys on Vacation and Why This Should Be Your Next Beach Destination

When the destination of Florida was tossed around for our family trip this year, admittedly, I had some serious hesitations. Normally, we try to go to some place that’s more of a “destination” or out of the country. But with the pandemic making international travel a bit more hectic and chaotic than what we were willing to risk, we decided on making the trip to the Florida Keys. As it turns out, the Florida Keys are so far from what I could have ever imagined being attached to our Sunshine State. The Florida Keys contain over 800 islands, but are …

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SCUBA Diving Key West, Florida

Despite the sweltering heat of a Florida summer, we chose to take a dive trip to the Florida Keys this July and I couldn’t have been more excited. The day after we landed and drove the four hours from Miami to the last Key in the Florida Keys, Key West. Once we got settled into our place, the next day we headed down to Front Street to Southpoint Divers Dive shop to get checked in and head to the dive boat which was parked in the nearby harbor. From there, we hopped on and headed onto the boat and headed …

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How to Fix Overly-Blue Underwater Photos

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten back from a day in the water SCUBA Diving, Snorkeling, or Surfing, and have been totally disappointed by my underwater photos. Every time, they come out looking the same. The photos area all overly blue, with little color elsewhere in the photo. And the deeper the depth that the photo was taken, the worse the photo looks. I always wondered if there was any way to save those photos that I worked so hard to capture in the first place. Of course, I could have used a fancy filter to add …

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