This video features a great big cowfish and a pair of spotted eagle rays.

Special thanks to Ecologic Divers for a great dive.

Finally, after an extremely long battle with technology, trying to find a converter, and learning how to edit video with Final Cut Express, we’ve finally got a good dive edit. There is a lot more content, which we’ll put up as the edits are finalized.

This video takes place during our first few minutes in the dive site “Tortuga Canyons.” No canyons seen in this footage, just some nurse sharks and a few goliath grouper. Enjoy.

Swimming with Sharks from Courtney Dean on Vimeo.

I wanted to mention something cool that we got to experience while in Belize. (I was hoping Courtney would do this post but seems as though he has abandoned his interest in this website and posting so bear with me here with the Scuba diving terms.)

When we went on our night dive in Ambergris Caye, we ran into a scuba diver who was tied down under a boat with a flashlight just sitting there. Curiosity got to us and our leaders (Ted)  called up to the boat about what was going on. We simply got the response “trying to break the world record.” Ok, so putting it together we figured he was trying to break the world record for staying underwater the longest? I remember snorkeling directly above him and thinking to myself: How does he eat? How does he use the bathroom? Man that must be boring down there?

Will Goodman from the UK spent 48 hours and 9 minutes and 17 seconds under water – setting the world record for the Longest Open Saltwater Scuba Dive.

It is really cool that we got to experience someone breaking a world record. I think we got some of this on video. I’ll see if I can motivate Courtney to do some work on this topic and the video.

I’ve been hard at work trying to edit the video from our trip. There is just so much, and I am only a novice video editor. Consequently, the wait is becoming much more than I’d imagined. That is unfortunate. I wanted to share the HD underwater video with everyone. It’ll happen. I just don’t know when.

In the meantime, I’ll share this: I’ve learned a few things about making movies and shooting video. It seems as though 90% of what you shoot is rubbish. It then becomes increasingly necessary to carefully cull through all of that rubbish in order to find the few fragments of entertaining content, piece those together in an interesting way and publish the end product with a few nifty bits and pieces of post production.

So far, I have managed to extract dozens of clips from the day and night dives. But I wasted so many good shots trying to use the zoom on the camera. Great shots like the crab and eel combo (a sushi delight) are almost completely ruined because of my poor video skills.

My friend Garrett, who lent me the camera suggested that I take all the video and scale it down to one minute clips. This, I thought, would be imjpossible given the volume of video I had. But now that I look back on it, two or three one-minute clips may be all I have once it is all said and done. Hopefully, the first will be ready for release at the end of this weekend.

We reported back in August about the Belize Hot Card, a discount card one can purchase for US$50 and use for discounts and perks at numerous locations throughout Ambergris Caye and a few places in Belize City.

Liz and I took our Hot Card into San Pedro each day and took advantage of a number of opportunities to save money. From restaurants to diving and snorkeling, we were able to get a lot for a little bit less than advertised thanks to this discount card.

About the only challenge we had was remembering to use the card. The card comes with a nice little printout of all the places where the card is honored. We checked that frequently when looking for a place to eat, such as at the Jambal Jerk Pit and Palapa Bar and Gill and let it often help us decide where to go. It never steered us wrong, but if we forgot to give the card to the server, or mention the card to the clerk, it was our own fault!

There were many discounts we weren’t able to capitalize on, such as hotel and golf cart/bike rentals simply because we either had prior reservations or simply weren’t on the island long enough. The cart rental would have been great had Cocotal not offered free use of their bikes and we were staying on the island longer.

We did, however score BIG with the card at Ecologic Divers! The 15% discount offered when one pays cash helped us to do much more than we’d originally budgeted for. We did a grand total of four dives and three snorkeling trips between the two of us. We saved much more than the cost of the card; and had we stuck around in Ambergris Caye longer, would have dove and snorkeled enough to save much, much more!