New Video - freediving with sharks

Finally was able to put together the video of my last shark dive with friend and U/W photographer Raul Boesel Jr.  Enjoy!

Freediving with Sharks

Last November I had the opportunity to go back to the Bahamas to freedive with my old man - something I have come to cherish particularly since overcoming his third cancer.  While we do not always talk that much (snorkel in mouth) - we definitely know what is going on in our minds.


The visibility and conditions were not always perfect -but the time we were able to spend in the water was just that - perfect.  I hope to have captured some of those moments in the video below.  By no means is this a short film / documentary - just memories that run over and over in our heads.





All video shot with GoPro while freediving.  Photo credit Wolf with Caribbean Reef Shark: Michel Lonfat

Tiger Beach trip November 2011.

As you can see, Felix doesn't even need a mask to enjoy Tiger Beach!

Photo: Wolfgang Leander (2011)

Click to enlarge

For some reason, the pics in my blog "Tiger Beach revisited" could not be enlarged.

Click here - should work now.

Enjoy.

Back from Tiger Beach - and already looking forward to my next trip....

What can I do? There is nothing I like better than diving and interacting with the local sharks. I am totally addicted to it, and I don't want to be cured, ever!!

This reef shark could sense that I wasn't dangerous to her.

Photo: Michel Lonfat

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David: Fantastically composed shot! Thank you!

Photo: David Ulloa

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I just love this tiger girl, and she seems to like me, too!

Photo: Isabel Muscat

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Felix - way more elegant than his old man (no wonder being half his age... :-)

Photo: David Ulloa

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Feel like Tiger Beach bumming?....

Tiger Beach: Best underwater beach to bum around - by far!!!

Photo: Wolfgang Leander (2009); the diver is Lyn Nelson, also a qualified TB beach bum - :-)

....I will, and I understand that Dom Macan of DiveAdvice has still three open spots on the forthcoming trips aboard the spacious "Dolphin Dream" (Oct 30 - Nov 5 and Nov 6 - 13).

As much as I am addicted to the tiger sharks of Tiger Beach, these two trips might be my last ones in the foreseeable future. *)

So, if you think that this is a chance to join a "professional" Tiger Beach bum, click here to get in touch with Dom.

Whoever you are, it would be nice to see ya "out there".

Wolf

*) Next year I will have a more traditional dive vacation to introduce my grand-son Wolfie to the marvels of the Bahamian undersea world (never too early to do that; I taught Felix to freedive before he could walk, also in the Bahamas).

And 2013? How could I plan that far ahead? In my age?!? No way, "Hosay" (= Jose)!!...

To make this blog short...

... the magnificent three!!! Taraaaa!

Jack Kearns Classic 2010

Every year (three so far) the South Florida Freediving club organizes the Jack Kearns Classic spearfishing competition.  This December I went out with friends Manuel Menendez, Manny Chica, and Eddie Aixala armed with a Nikonos and video camera.  Conditions were beyond horrible and visibility was minimal, making taking pictures or video impossible.  But the bad weather did not stop Manny and Manuel from taking first and second prize in the men's gun division individual and team.  I spent most of the time on the boat giving directions to the captain (Eddie) as he was having difficulties dealing with the currents, waves, and vegan sandwiches (all an inside joke, he did fine).  We all did have our wet-suits on to deal with the cold and rain.  While the weather was not cooperating, having good company and laughs made up for it.


The same week of the competition, Manuel was featured in the Miami Herald on a story about lobstering - read here (not sure why he did not take the team ;) ).  We go out often to catch stones crabs and lobster while in season - undisclosed location.  Catching and eating your own food just makes it always taste so much better.

Inside a Shark Bite without risking Life and Limb...

Last year Felix and I had the kind of friendly encounters with tiger sharks we both love: Just hanging around with the babes of Tiger Beach, swimming and diving freely with them.

Felix put together a nice video clip we thought you would enjoy watching.

At the end of the clip you will see one of the tigers getting very interested in Felix' camera.




We were both at the surface when the shark grabbed the camera, and already had it inside her cavernous mouth. Felix held on to his camera and managed to get it out of the tiger's jaws without hurting himself. It was easy as the shark's bite was rather gentle.

Felix filming the last sequence of the video clip.
Photo: Manuel Lazcano (2009)
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I was right next to them, and can testify that Felix did not risk "life and limb" going into the mouth of the tiger girl - definitely not the stuff "Shark Week" is made of.... :-)

More Family.

Photo: Wolfgang Leander (Miami, June 2010)
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This is my one and only grand-dog Tibu. Smart, sensitive - just like his parents Felix and Carmen...... :-)

Amazing shot, Felix!

Barracudas
Photo: Felix Leander

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Clean, minimalistic, essential.

What else can I say? Not more than this: Keep practising - you're definitely getting there!!

Effective Shark Protection.

Honduras has now joined the Maldives and Palau in setting an example how to protect their shark populations: These countries have decided to ban all shark fishing. Bravo!

The Save-Our-Seas Foundation people have informed their readers about the Honduran initiative; as we see no need to re-write what they have put on record, click here to be linked to their blog.

As old Bahamas fans - I lived in Nassau between 1974 and 1980; Felix was born there in 1976 - we would love to see the Bahamas following suit.

A ray of hope for the sharks in the Bahamas?

Photo: Wolfgang Leander
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Just imagine the huge Bahamian archipelago with its 700 islands becoming a "legal" shark sanctuary!

Once aware of it, the sharks in the Bahamas would not migrate anymore, and stay "home" instead. Ask our "Doc" (Dr. Samuel Gruber); he will confirm that sharks are quite clever and fast learners.... :-)

Effective shark protection: Honduras, the Maldives, and Palau have shown the world that it can be done - with substantial benefits to their tourism industries AND the health of their sharks!

Dance with a Tiger

Tiger Shark and Felix - Photo by Manuel Lazcano

Manuel Lazcano caught a great sequence: a Tiger shark dancing with me.  Actually, I think she was interested in my camera - this was not the only instance of a tiger shark coming at my video camera.  I had never seen a tiger shark come vertically up the way she did.  


Of course this was not an aggressive behavior or a quick motion.  She came up very slow and by gently hold out my camera I was able to move her to the side.


You can see the whole series here: OceanicDreams Flickr


On a separate day, a different and much larger shark decided to take my camera at the surface, tape was rolling - I will post the video later this week.

Dwelling on underwater photography, here is a master shot:

Freediver photographing a large and most graceful Galeocerdo Cuvier (Aliwal Shoal / South Africa) Click on image to enlarge

The author: A bloody amateur who has never taken underwater pics before. It is one of the best, if not THE best, man / shark photograph I have ever seen.

I won't say more because of my close relationship with the photographer - he is Felix, my one and only baby boy!! (Oh, I know what he will tell me: "Dad, will you pleeeeeeze take that embarrassing remark off the blog?"...... No, I won't, OK? :-)

Tiger sharks - help, help!!.........

Felix filming his dad befriending a gentle tiger lady.
Photo: Manuel Lazcano
Click on the image to enlarge

....... we, the Leanders, are totally addicted to tiger sharks!!

Do you know, by any chance, a SLA group ("Shark Lovers Anonymous") that could help us to become "clean"?

Just kidding, of course. We most definitely do not want to get cured from the tiger shark addiction!

Here you can see both Leanders "at work": Felix filming his old man playing with a gentle tiger lady. YES, "gentle". However, in order not to be misinterpreted, please read the disclaimer on the right, printed in red.

We don't want to get into trouble with those "experts" who have never dived with tiger sharks, yet insist that tiger sharks are notorious man-eaters, and vociferously claim that what we are doing is "irresponsible" as it might create the impression that these large sharks are as docile as dog puppies.

Unfortunately, these "experts" prefer to believe what other "experts" with NO or very little experience with sharks have been preaching since "Jaws" was released (1975), and before.

Once again: Tiger sharks are most gentle sharks but as predators they are not harmless. Are we, for that matter...??

So, unless you have a LOT of experience diving with sharks and know how they behave in any given circumstance, don't interact with them closely, don't hand-feed them, and humbly enjoy the incredible privilege of being able to observe them in their habitat.

'Relevant experience': I have had my first shark encounters while spear-fishing in the Caribbean back in 1968, and believe that I was able to pass on some of that practically acquired knowledge of shark behavior to Felix who was born eight years after I had seen "my" first shark.

Photo: Manuel Lazcano
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Anyway - as you can see, I just looooove to hug dem striped babes....

Long live the tiger sharks of Tiger Beach, ALL sharks wherever they have "their" beaches...

Freediving in 1981

I was looking through some files and came across this video (that we actually converted from SUPER 8 - have a lot of footage) of my father and myself freediving in Sharm el-Sheikh, Israel. In those days I was still not able or willing to use a snorkel and my movements were anything but relaxing, talking about being shark bait...nevertheless, I was already in love with the Sea...

Felix made headlines in Montevideo, and with it my day!!

Click on images to enlarge and read

There is not much I want to say except that I almost burst of parental pride when I saw Felix in the most important business publication of Uruguay ("El Empresario").

Felix is to be envied to be able to work for Burson-Marsteller, a top international communications firm.

Being one of the company´s regional digital media strategists he gets to train his colleagues in the field offices in Latin America, and assists them in advising corporate clients how to "become digital" to maintain and enhance relevance communicating with stakeholders and customers. That entails both establishing close human bonds with his overseas colleagues, and making on-the-spot client presentations.

When I was Felix´s age I also worked in PR - but as a press officer of an investment company, my work consisted mainly of writing, and placing, articles about mutual funds. Not boring but certainly not as exciting as Felix´s job with B-M.

This is the second time a Uruguayan publication reported about a member of the family. In 1936, a newspaper featured Felix´s grandfather, Wolfgang Julius Leander, after he performed much noticed aerobatic flights with a 80 HP Buecker-Jungmann biplane in Montevideo. Makes me feel good about both my dad and my son.

More Video from Tiger Beach

Benjamin has been cranking out some more video from our trip to Tiger Beach, this time with the editing touch of Fiona...

"Wie gleiche, wie Papi" - a few old family stories, and Felix's not so surprisingly new passion....

When Felix was not even 2 1/2 years old, his cute observation in baby German meant pretty much something like "Like son, like daddy". We were wearing the same type of beach sandals, and that is what Felix had keenly, and proudly, noticed.

I also always thought - actually pretended - that Felix was a little Wolf, an extension of myself (all insecure macho-fathers seem to need the assurance that their babies are without the slightest trace of a doubt REALLY theirs... Hahahaahahaha!!!!)

Anyway, some people say Felix is like his Mom... (good for him!)

..... others think that Felix has more of his old man (luckily not the Wolf's schnas :-)

But that is not what I wanted to say. I want to say that Felix has turned into a Sharkman*), one of the kind I like: Genuinely feeling close to, and concerned about, sharks. No ego-driven BS, and not exuberantly advertising his new love. Sharks have become Felix's intimate passion, and diving with them a big time adventure.

*) open the link

A fully grown Blacktip Shark approaches Felix - and he loves it!!

Not that the urge for 'adventure' would run deeply in the family; we Leanders just need a touch of the exceptional once in a while to feel that we are alive.

I have to enlighten you, so please bear with me as I schmooze a little bit about the topic.

I was a simple money changer by trade all my life, and, believe me, there is nothing especially "adventurous" about collecting deposits at low interest rates with your left hand and basically lending the same dough at higher rates with your right hand.

In fact, it is a rather safe and, I'd say, boring way to earn money, not tons of it, but enough to enable Shylock's epigones to make a decent living with just the 'spread'.

So, to add some spice to my very bourgeois life as a three piece suit wearing wan... errr, I mean banker, I did some pretty reckless stuff such as, for instance back in 1967, applying for, and getting, a job on a yacht as a navigator without having a clue of dead reckoning, let alone celestial navigation.

After I was hired I promised to do my home-work, and learned the bare essentials, including the functions of a sextant, in two weeks.... For those of you who only know what a GPS is: Christopher Columbus used a quadrant, a forerunner of the sextant. Columbus' quadrant was basically the same instrument I had to became familiar with.

We sailed in a 42-ft yacht from Mallorca to the Canary Islands, me being the only one with at least a pale notion of the art of navigating offshore. Hard to believe but we were blown off the course by only 10 miles - everybody was very happy with the relative accuracy of my navigation. Mind you, this was a little over forty years ago.

My father Wolfgang Julius Leander (1905 - 1964), a native of Berlin, also had a rather traditional job in the 1930s, at least in his own, non-typical unassuming view as a 'Berliner' - he was, among other things, a meticulous mechanical engineer and a stunt and test pilot to whom risk had to be manageable by calculation, not speculation or intuition - not exactly the trait of a hard-core adventurer.

And yet, doing hair-raising aerobatics in small biplanes or ditching a fully loaded Curtiss C-46 into a swamp in the Bolivian tropical lowlands as opposed to sitting safely in ventilated offices was his way of satisfying his hunger for a little excitement in life - lieber Papi: You were my hero, still are!!

My maternal Hamburg born grandfather Alfred Wacey Barber (1866 - 1937) set up shop in the middle of the Amazon in 1890 as a 24 year old rubber entrepreneur. This was right after serving a three year overseas assignment as an assistant representative of a German trading firm in Vera Cruz, Mexico.

I hesitate to say that my grandfather was a 'rubber baron' (he was), having heard too often the sometimes more fitting expression 'robber baron' for shady characters and other soldiers of fortune swarmed in from Europe and elsewhere who were just that: robbers - Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador was full of 'interesting' people already then.

Alfred Wacey Barber might have met Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the highlands of Bolivia without knowing who the dashing gringos Paul Newman and Robert Redford really were... :-)

For sure the legendary Fitzcarraldo, obsessively well played by Klaus Kinski in the Herzog cult movie of the same name, and my grandfather must have known each other - they were both competitors of British extraction in the rubber business.

Amidst this rather, shall we say, unusual business ambiente my grandfather thought of himself, and was regarded by others, as a dependable, solid 'Kaufmann'. To him, and his generation, that word was synonymous with the protestant ethics of an honorable, old school merchant in the best hanseatic tradition.

Sorry for having gone off at a tangent perhaps a bit too far...

OK, now back to Felix.

Felix, 31, works as a Lead Digital Strategist at Burson-Marsteller, the world's largest PR agency. And, boy, does he get to see the world in that position!

Today London, next week Mumbay and Delhi, then the boss sends Felix to co-lead or lead a three-day long training workshop in Santiago, Buenos Aires or Lima, only to find out on his flight back that he has to travel next to San Francisco to discuss digital media strategies with one of Burson-Marsteller's prestigious client in that area.

Wow - I envy Felix for his fantastically dynamic job! Not so sure whether Carmencita, my daughter-in-law, and Tibucito, my grand-dog-in-law, feel the same - hehehehehe.

Anyway.

Long story short, finally: I wanted to share with you the pleasure I felt to realize that Felix has learnt one of the most important lessons in PR: "PR begins at home".

Accordingly, Felix has posted about sharks in his company's blog, and thus converted the world-wide Burson-Marsteller family into shark lovers!!! Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Is this a good life or what??

Felix sent me this pic today with a laconic caption:

"A good brew after a nice dive in the Florida Keys with Felipe Conill."

Actually, what else is there to say?...

Master Shot

........ what else is there to say?

Sounds conceited? Well, it's not because this image is not mine :-)

Felix was the lucky one to get this stunning composition in his frame.

Look closely: The big tiger mama is swimming toward a large jelly fish, not minding the freediving photographer at her left.

I retired from my banking job five years ago; maybe it's time for me to retire from my "job" as shark photographer....