A clownfish pokes its head out of a fluttering anemone, then darts back in. I’m snorkeling through the Nemo Garden, an area rich in the predatory marine invertebrates known as anemones and the fish who love them. When I pop back to the surface, marine biologist Caitlin Rentell of Sun Siyam Iru Fushi explains their symbiotic relationship.
“The anemones have stinging cells in them so other organisms will get stung by the anemones,” Rentell told me. “But clownfish have this special mucous that basically coats their skin. And they’ve evolved so they can go in the anemones without getting stung.” The movement of the clownfish brings fresh water and nutrients to anemones, which are attached to coral reefs or rocks on the sea floor. In return, clownfish hide out in anemones to evade predators.
I spent nine days at three different Sun Siyam resorts in the Maldives. Since the South Asian country is 1% land and 99% ocean, it’s heaven if you like a water-focused vacation. Activities range from quiet and educational to loud and motorized.
Clownfish staying close to their anemone. / Photo by Caitlin Rentell
There’s something so evocative about lighthouses and the lonely yet romantic lives of lighthouse keepers. They were available to work 24/7 and had the responsibility of keeping a tower’s lamp lit every night from sundown to sunrise. Many travelers can’t get enough of these historic beacons, whether they’re taking photos from the base or climbing to the top to check out the views.
According to the United States Lighthouse Society, 779 lighthouses are currently standing in the country. Here are some of the best-looking lighthouses to visit while traveling around the U.S. this summer — just in time for National Lighthouse Day on August 7.
Discover tales of sunken ships, crashed planes, and more.
Ken Stewart first learned to scuba dive in 1989 and immediately became hooked. But by 2003, after almost 800 dives, his beloved sport had become a bit same-old, same-old.
“All the fish start looking alike,” Stewart said. “If you go from Florida to any exotic country, you’ll say, ‘oh, man, that fish looks like the same fish, or the same corals.’ There were some places that look more exotic than the other. But after a while, it becomes repetitive.”
His diving life perked up when a documentary filmmaker named Karuna Eberl contacted him. By then, Stewart, a Nashville resident, was the Southern states representative for the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. Eberl asked Stewart to put her in touch with some Black divers willing to be interviewed for her documentary “The Guerrero Project.” The slave ship Guerrero, which has still not been found, sank in 1827 somewhere around what is now Biscayne National Park in Florida.
Photo by Tane Casserley
The project led Stewart to meet the late Brenda Lanzendorf, a park archeologist at Biscayne National Park. “We became instant friends,” Stewart said. “She had this infectious personality. She was unbelievable.” Lazendorf was congressionally mandated to monitor the 41 or so wrecks in Biscayne National Park. But she was a lone diver. And she needed a diving buddy.
Back home in Nashville, Stewart had an epiphany. He sent out an email to the divers who’d become involved in the Guerrero project. “I said, ‘Are you tired of the same old diving? Let’s dive with a purpose.’ And that’s exactly how it started.” Within a year, Lazendorf and Stewart had assembled the first Diving with a Purpose (DWP) program.
Diving with a Purpose today
Now about 20 years old, DWP is a leading volunteer underwater archaeology program. It provides education, training, and project support services for submerged conservation projects and heritage preservation. DWP focuses on the African diaspora but also works on many other shipwrecks.
More than 300 people have participated in DWP. Most are repeat attendees. Every year, a DWP group dives together in Florida, documenting wrecks. The program has expanded from Biscayne National Park to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA).
Stewart is involved with DWP’s spinoff program, Youth Diving with a Purpose (YWDP), which trains young divers to be archeology advocates that help document shipwrecks. Additionally, DWP consults on projects worldwide.
Underwater archeology
If you’re like me, your first vision of diving into a shipwreck includes swimming around a whole ship on the seafloor, the vessel’s name clearly written on the side, and perhaps an old skeleton still at the helm. I probably saw this in a cartoon.
“In the Keys, any wooden ship that has sunk, it’s not intact,” Stewart informed me. In addition to deterioration caused by ocean activity, undersea worms eat the wood. Instead of an intact vessel, divers explore a field of artifacts on the ocean floor. “The worms can’t eat the artifacts,” Stewart said.
Divers map the artifacts with pin flags and strings called baselines. They use trilateration mapping, which lets them determine positions using distances from at least three known points. The baseline could be 300 yards long. The divers form groups of two to work sections of the wreck. While underwater, they’re mapping, writing figures down, and even doing in situ drawings that can involve staying in the same place for an hour or more.
Photo by Tane Casserley
Part of the process is figuring out what’s an artifact and what isn’t. “Usually the artifacts have some kind of crustaceans on it, so it’s very difficult to determine what an artifact is when it’s on the ocean floor,” Stewart said. “Sometimes you can take your knife and you can hit the artifact. Oh, it sounds like metal. So you know Mother Nature didn’t make metal. So they’ll do that with every artifact along those 300 yards of baseline. Every one.” Before the divers resurface, they remove all the flags and the baseline. Two architects work with DWP to turn the divers’ info into site maps.
This kind of detailed work takes a special kind of diver. It’s not for everybody. Many divers prefer working with DWP’s conservation program, Stewart says, which is more hands-on and helps restore coral reefs.
DWP and the African diaspora
A lot of people contact DWP because they want to help document slave ships, Stewart said. However, not many have been found. Stewart has only conducted dives on three of them. “We’re laying the groundwork for people who want to be involved in the documentation of a slave wreck when and if another one is found,” he said.
The first slave ship Stewart dove was the Henrietta Marie, an English ship that carried captive Africans to the West Indies. It wrecked in 1700, 35 miles off the coast of Key West. Since it was on its way back to England, no Africans were on board. Treasure hunter Mel Fisher found it in 1972, and Stewart dove it in the late 1980s.
“The eeriness of it is what kind of gets to you,” Stewart told me.
Eventually, the cleaned-up artifacts toured the United States in a traveling exhibit called “A Slave Ship Speaks.” “The thing that really brings tears to your eyes, and everybody who has seen it, is the shackles for the children,” Stewart said. In his work with youth, Stewart tries to convey the horror of finding oneself enslaved. “I tell the children all the time, here you are walking down the street and then somebody snatches you up and takes you to another country. You never see your family again. Can you imagine that? And most kids can’t. Most people can’t.”
The National Association of Black Scuba Divers placed a plaque at the site of the Henrietta Marie. Divers can use GPS to find the plaque and the ship’s hull, which is encased in sand.
Photo courtesy of Diving with a Purpose
DWP has also documented Tuskegee Airmen airplanes in Michigan’s Lake Huron. The men who flew these planes were the first Black military aviators in the country. During World War II, they escorted American bombers over Italy and protected larger bombers from German planes. Fifteen of the airmen died while training over the Great Lakes. DWP was able to document the plane flown by Lieutenant Frank H. Moody. The organization also helped raise funds to place a memorial to the Tuskegee Airmen beside Lake Huron.
As for the Guerrero, the wrecked ship that inspired DWP’s creation, divers are still looking. This July, YDWP is conducting what Stewart hopes will be the final search for the ship. “I’m bringing the crème de la crème, the best that I’ve got,” he said. “These kids are dynamic.” And if they finally find the Guerrero, DWP will have a whole new chapter in its documentation mission.
Want to help? Qualified divers with more than 30 dives (or 25 for youth) are welcome to get involved with DWP. You can also donate to Diving with a Purpose here.
Want to learn more about slave ships? The Africatown Heritage House in Mobile, Alabama, is opening its new exhibit documenting the Clotilda on July 8, 2023.
See the photos of some of the most visually dramatic oceanside golf holes ever built.
What do you get when you hire the famed design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw to build a course on one of the most dramatic meetings of land and sea imaginable? Ben Cowan-Dewar, co-founder and CEO of the Canadian-based Cabot Collection, has his answer in the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia.
Scheduled to open in December, Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot Saint Lucia is perched above the Atlantic Ocean on cliffs that offer a simply ridiculous set of visuals on more than half the club’s 18 holes. Picture any of the most scenic holes anywhere – Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Pebble Beach Golf Links or Cypress Point in California, even the original Cabot courses in Nova Scotia as famous examples – and Point Hardy matches them all for you-gotta-be-joking views, proximity to the ocean and pulse-raising golf shots over cauldrons of salt spray.
All the holes at Point Hardy, including the inland holes atop a ridge or playing through a valley, are within sight of the ocean, and eight of them offer a chance to rinse a golf ball in salt water. On a day when the trade winds kick it up a notch, golfers will feel ocean spray at several points along the routing.
The hard part wasn’t building a dramatic course on the steep ground at the northern tip of the volcanic island. On a recent walk around the course as construction of Point Hardy nears completion, Coore said the toughest part was building golf holes on which the fun factor at least approaches the level of the visuals.
“Playability, playability, playability,” said Coore, who has routed some of the best courses to be constructed in the world over the past 30 years. “It would have been very easy to build a course where the views are incredible but that just wasn’t any fun to play, because the terrain is so steep. The challenge was to make it fun, to make people want to play it again.”
Did the team succeed on that front? Time will tell, and Golfweek will have plenty more on Cabot Saint Lucia in the coming months. In the meantime, just take in the incredible photos below of the two strings of golf holes closest to the ocean at Point Hardy.
Keep in mind with the following photos that the course is still in grow-in and that several holes haven’t been grassed yet, so brown areas on greens and fairways seen in these photos are completely expected as the grass takes root. The bunkers have not yet been filled with sand and appear as natural scrapes in the photos. This is still very much a work in progress.
And to answer a few questions we know are coming:
Point Hardy will allow some versions of public-access play early on as its membership role is filled, with details still being determined. Eventually the course will be at least mostly private.
Yes, it will be expensive compared to most U.S. daily-fee prices. Green fees and stay-and-play options have yet to be set, but don’t expect it to be cheap on a site like this. A vehicular analogy: This course is a Lamborghini full of bravado and pulse-racing moments, not a four-cylinder Kia that simply gets the job done, and the pricing will be along those lines.
Will it be among the best courses in the world? There’s no way to know where it will sit on Golfweek’s Best rankings of top courses in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and the Atlantic Islands until our raters visit and offer their scores. But don’t be surprised to see Point Hardy very near the top of that list.
Cabot Saint Lucia includes a housing development, ranging from fairway villas all the way up to mansions priced at millions of dollars. Besides the golf, there will be a beach club in a gorgeous bay and a full slate of luxury amenities. There are no plans for a traditional hotel. Accommodations will be available as rental luxury residences and villas.
Point Hardy Golf Club will play to 6,616 yards with a par of 71.
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At the non-profit research organization OCEARCH, the motto is “facts over fear.” While many people have learned to appreciate and respect sharks, the world still has a ways to go in destigmatizing these aquatic creatures. By sharing facts and resources like the popular Shark Tracker, OCEARCH helps people overcome their shark fears. But what if reading about sharks and tracking their movement isn’t enough for you? For marine life enthusiasts who crave a more extreme experience, OCEARCH is now accepting entries for the “Meet A Shark” sweepstakes. Here are the details on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and how you can get involved.
As explained in an OCEARCH press release, the “Meet A Shark” sweepstakes will invite one winner and a guest to join the OCEARCH team on an ocean research expedition. “The lucky winner will be able to watch some of the world’s top shark researchers at work and have the opportunity to meet and tag a white shark,” the press release stated.
This experience may not be for the faint of heart, but it is an excellent way to support a scientific cause and learn more about marine life. Even if oceanic adventures aren’t your speed, other prizes may entice you to enter the sweepstakes. In addition to the grand prize trip, OCEARCH will reward 100 entrants with prize packs including a hoodie, sun shirt, hat, pair of Costa sunglasses, and custom YETI travel mug.
So, how do you enter the “Meet A Shark” sweepstakes? Until Sept. 30, curious shark fans can enter by donating to OCEARCH or sending an email entry (instructions here). Winners will be randomly chosen on Oct. 3. Until then, satisfy your craving for more shark content with this cool live shark cam.
Human history and marine life meet at the site of underwater shipwrecks. After years of residing on the ocean floor, ships can take on a strange second life as a habit for local fish. One example of this fascinating phenomenon is U-352, a sunken German U-boat off the North Carolina coast.
Built in 1940 and sunk on May 9, 1942, the boat now hosts an ecosystem of algae and coral. Thanks to photography from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, curious explorers can take a virtual tour of this shipwreck and learn more about its history.
Amid World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic, U-352 was sunk by USCGC Icarus. Decades later, the ship’s abandoned shell remains nestled in its watery grave. Now federally protected by the Sunken Military Craft Act, the wreck site welcomes intrigued divers for a visit as long as they leave the area unaltered. As the dive slate for U-352 reads, “take only pictures, leave only bubbles.”
Visitors who brave the depths to explore this shipwreck can expect to find red barbier baitfish, amberjack, sea anemones, and more. Marine life has claimed the crash as an unconventional home, giving the wreckage a new purpose. Even turtles and sand tiger sharks have been known to visit the site.
While photos and videos show the ship in great detail, adventurers craving a firsthand glimpse of the site can visit with help from North Carolina diving companies. Companies like Olympus Diving even provide helpful information about what to expect during your visit. At a depth of 110 feet, the ship entices divers for a closer look at this historical site.
