Michele Westmorland_Yucatan RAVE DAY2

First day of diving!
Myfanwy and I headed to Paradise Divers early this morning. It was a productive day – our first stop was Columbia Reef, one of Cozumel’s most popular dive sites. We could tell because we counted 20 dive boats on the way there, and we’re in the off-season right now. Our top priority was to film and photograph a lionfish capture – we wanted to get documentation of lionfish in a Caribbean setting, and film the capture of a lionfish. We did manage to find two and film them on the reef. Unfortunately, they were both very small and disappeared back into the wall when Julio, our divemaster, attempted to trap them.
We got back to the hotel and edited material until Robert Cudney (Director of Mexico Silvestre and former Director of the National Marine Park) and Tony Periz picked us up. Tony is a dive operator with Careyitos Divers. The four of us had an incredible dinner at Guido’s, the restaurant owned and operated by Robert’s family. We talked about the conservation issues facing Cozumel and our plan for the week. Tomorrow we’ll spend the entire day with the National Park team. For the moment, we’d like to extend our sincere heartfelt gratitude to Hotel Cozumel for hosting us and Dive Paradise for sponsoring us with three days of diving here in Cozumel.



Meet iLCP Fellow Michele Westmorland
Myfanwy Rowlands is a friend of the iLCP and the 2009 North American Rolex Scholar
Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society . She is assisting Michele on her RAVE mission and getting the scoop behind the scenes!

Michele's images will be seen at WILD9, the 9th World Wilderness Congress
November 6-13, 2009
Merida, Mexico