Snorkeling Blog

Snorkelers are accustomed to incredible scenery, but even the most experienced among us are bowled over by the underwater vistas created by Jason De Caires Taylor. If you are lucky enough to snorkel at one of Taylor’s sites, you’re going to want to bring a camera. Taylor creates underwater sculptures that serve as artificial reefs – with marine life colonizing and transforming his sculptures in spectacular ways.

Taylor’s work has a serious conservation angle, as his sculptures not only create a new habitat, they are also designed to divert traffic from other coral reef areas that suffer from overuse.

Taylor is currently engaged in the construction of a huge underwater sculpture museum – the Cancun and Isla Mujeres Art Underwater Art Museum, a must-see if you’re snorkeling in Mexico. You will be awestruck by the sculpture gardens, but keep your wits – you can never forget the rules of safety.

Kate Beckinsale enjoys snorkeling in mexico with her husband and daughter.

Here is a great story from the Isle of Man about a new training program aimed at eventually training 3,000 people as snorkeling instructors in the UK.
Seven enthusiastic volunteers have completed the Isle of Man’s first ever Snorkel Instructor Training course.
The British Sub Aqua club, the national governing body for snorkeling, recently launched an initiative to train 3,000 new snorkel instructors across the UK.

read the whole thing
This is a GREAT idea – while diving takes a much larger investment in time and money, snorkeling is simple, accessible and cheap – but many people just don’t know how to do it. We get emails all the time from people who want to go but just don’t know how / what to do.

More proof that celebrities love snorkeling – here are some photos of Rihanna in a Bikini Snorkeling

From Our Celebrity Snorkelers Collection….

Kim Kardashian Snorkeling in a Bikini.

Next time you are in Hawaii and want to hit the water, but think it may be a bit rough or that you won’t be able to see many fish – here is an option that guarantees you will see the fish up close.  The 280,000 gallon oceanarium  at the Pacific Beach hotel now offers SNUBA – $45 for 20 minutes for hotel guests, maximum 2 at a time.

Jim Cody discovered this shell while snorkeling in an isolated cove in the Bahamas.

Read the full story here.

Here is a great post on the Hawaii Insider blog on the SFGate website that talks about water safety in Hawaii. Dozens of people – many of them tourists – die on the water every year in Hawaii, many of them by simply making bad decisions. The author makes some great points…

But millions of visitors to Hawai’i over the years have survived their vacations quite happily, in large part thanks to their answers to these and other commmonsense questions:

• Do I know what I’m doing in the ocean — snorkeling, boogie boarding or even open-water swimming?
• If not, will I seek out qualified instruction once in the islands?
• If I do know how, can I accept that conditions in Hawai’i might be more challenging than those found elsewhere, and adjust my behavior accordingly?
• Will I read the beach safety brochures in hotel rooms, check the local newspapers and/or online updates for current conditions, and talk to locals before heading to a specific beach?
• Can I remember that a pretty guidebook picture or the advice of friends might portray different conditions from what’s actually in front of me?
• At the beach, will I take warning signs into account, and — especially if I see no one in the water, or only people who appear to be other visitors — will I consider heading to a lifeguarded beach instead, or just enjoying the view from a safe distance on the sand?

And after thinking about this, we have to admit – we’ve made some bad decisions in our day. Snorkeling alone, snorkeling too far from shore, or in rough conditions. 99% of the time you will be fine doing these sorts of things – but who ever expects those “1%” types of things to happen? Certainly not the people who are killed every year. Be safe out there everyone.

President Obama Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay in Hawaii – Fall 2008.

Welcome to a brand new feature here on Snorkeling.info – where we feature recent celebrity snorkelers.

Today we feature Jude Law on a recent snorkeling trip….