Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Saturday, February 17, 2018,
In :
Events
This year is off to a sprint! Just a few weeks ago, I got a phone call inviting me to accept an award at the World Shootout award ceremony at the Boot show in Dusseldorf. Suddenly, a year that was already packed to the gills with travel was about to get even crazier. But there were complications. For starters, it was winter and I had to borrow a winter coat. And by the time I had clearance to travel, I had days to buy flights to a place that is half a world away. And finally, the awards cerem...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Friday, March 10, 2017,
In the last 13 hours, I have haggled over 65,000 rupiah
(what amounts to about $7US) for a west Papuan penis gourd, dipped my toes in
the Indian Ocean, and because the Indian Ocean might be polluted, I had my toes
cleaned by fish in what was probably the weirdest tourism ritual I have ever
played along with. And as I sit here and
wait for my airport transfer out of Bali, I can’t help but reflect that none of
this has anything to do with why I am here.
Coconut Octopus (Amphi...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Saturday, January 28, 2017,
In :
Events
This is already shaping up to be an amazing year. I am headed to Raja Ampat and Lembeh (Indonesia) next month, Papua New Guinea in November, and this morning I just found out that my Team America just won Gold in the World Shootout. It is considered the Grand Prix of Underwater Photography. Teams consisting of three photographers from all over the world compete with six images (two per entrant). The teams were narrowed down to the top five last month, and just this morning, the ceremony a...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Thursday, May 21, 2015,
I have always enjoyed the Australian aboriginal concept of a "walk-about" defined in Merriam Webster as "a short period of wandering bush life engaged in by an Australian aborigine as an occasional interruption of regular work." A few weeks ago I planned a last-minute trip to meet my dad at his Florida vacation rental at Anna Maria Island. My flight arrived in Miami, 4 hours away and 5 days ahead of him, which gave me 5 days to wander about Florida at my own pace as an interruption to my re...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Saturday, March 14, 2015,
False killer whale coming in for a closer look at the boat.
Two weeks ago I woke up at 6 am to a dilemma. On the one hand I was meeting my friend in an hour to try to find some hammerhead sharks from my boat. Option “B” was a cryptic text message saying, “Jeff, call me if you are up.” Satellite tags deployed by
Cascadia Research Collective on the back of a pod of endangered false killer whales (
Pseudorca crassidens) showed that they were 14 miles south of the harbor and making their...
Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Monday, August 25, 2014,
I was approached in March to help out with an episode for
this year’s Shark Week on Discovery Channel.
From the get go, I knew what the premise of the show was about. I figured it would be hyped and
sensationalized. I assumed I would be
misquoted because that’s just what the media does. And when we went out three nights in a row
and didn’t see anything, I knew they would CG some sharks in place because a
Shark Week show without sharks would be rather dull. And bec...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Sunday, December 30, 2012,
In :
Megafauna
For the most part, the ocean is a vast pit full of a fat lot of nothing. How much nothing? If you set sail from California on a straight path at a cruising speed of 12 mph, you might not hit land or see anything of interest for 22 days. Underwater is a lot of the same. When working on an open ocean aquaculture project where we dived in the middle of the ocean twice per day for months on end, most of the dives were in deep, unbroken, gin-clear blue water. I spent hours looking at nothing...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Friday, December 14, 2012,
In :
Events
On Wednesday, I was honored to help wed two of my good friends, Amanda Tucker and Alan Brockman. Their one request was that the ceremony be held 80 feet underwater. As the bride made her way down the mooring, the guests, headed up by Reverend Gabe Scotti, arranged themselves on the deck above the wheelhouse of the Sea Tiger. The dappled light of the afternoon sun and turbid visibility created a unique atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the bride's white dress and red bouquet.
I had n...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Tuesday, November 27, 2012,
In :
Megafauna
There is a saying that goes “Never meet your heroes.” The idea is that your heroes only seem invincible because you don’t know their dirty secrets and character flaws. So when I noticed that National Geographic’s premiere shark photographer Daniel Botelho was in town, I reluctantly suggested we should go find some sharks. His photos depicting oceanic whitetips and white sharks are of incomparable caliber, but it was his shots from Tiger Beach that really impressed on me. After spe...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Wednesday, September 19, 2012,
In :
Megafauna
My friends and I are a little light of pocket to go to Tiger Beach, Bahamas, so, needing an adventure, we sought to find our own local animal, a tiger shark known as "Laverne" who is known to make a living in the waters of Honokohau Harbor. We headed for Kona to dive like crazy and hurry back before anyone noticed we were missing. What we found was not one animal, but at least four all crowding the area looking for scraps from fishing boats. They ranged in size from about 10 feet up to may...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Monday, September 3, 2012,
One of my fondest memories growing up in Connecticut is the way the world wakes up in the summer. Since moving to Hawaii 5 years ago, I’ve dearly missed using overly hot, muggy days as an excuse to find a body of water and just jump in. In addition to its coastline, Connecticut has a multitude of lakes, ponds and rivers to keep a growing biologist busy and out of trouble. I have always wanted to take what I have since learned back to my home state and explore with my new set of eyes. ...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Thursday, August 23, 2012,
In :
Megafauna
If finishing my thesis was the only thing happening in my life right now, stagnancy would kill me long before I got to printing a draft. I have learned to take activity breaks as a coping mechanism to keep from injuring myself for fun. In elementary school, it might be called recess, except my recesses often involve large animals or plunging unseen depths. I try to make the most of the allotted time I have outside. For example, I found myself in need of some fresh shark images for a proj...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Thursday, August 9, 2012,
After a couple of months of government mandated radio silence, I'm starting to catch up. My outboard is now fixed, new photos and sections are up all over my webpage, and my thesis is back on track so today I decided to take some time off to go play. I love it when Matt calls me up because it usually means he has found something underwater and needs pictures of it. Last time it was an airplane and this time it was, well, another airplane.
The first adventure with Matt found little more ...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Sunday, April 29, 2012,
Green Sea Turtle (
Chelonia mydas) resting on the fantail of the YO-257
A century of maritime history, military occupation and artificial reefing has left Oahu's sea floor generously sprinkled with metallic relics from the past. I don't pretend to know much about these submerged artifacts, but if you dive Oahu enough, you're bound to stumble across some form of interesting man-made litter. For whatever reason (aligned stars, voodoo, or just dumb luck) this past month has been especially ri...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Tuesday, April 10, 2012,
When the anti-Jesus is born and your house is surrounded by hell-fires this 2012, where will you go to watch armies of mythical creatures battle it out with the invading demons? Perhaps you have a tranquil stream in your backyard or a spot in your living room where the AC is particularly refreshing to await the inevitable hordes of zombies coming to eat your brains. While you are huddled in the corner of your bedroom watching wussy unicorns get wedgies from short red men with horns, I, pr...
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Posted by Jeffrey Milisen on Tuesday, April 10, 2012,
Originally posted Feb. 17th, 2012
From big animals on picturesque reefs to the world-famous manta dive and now the mind-boggling blackwater dive, Kona maintains a monopoly on Hawaiian style diving. Taking a cue from the alien pelagic environment, I've recently been working with Gabe and Drew at Kaimana Divers to bring the alien world of Blackwater to Oahu. I pitched the idea and they picked up the torch on just about everything else. Come Sunday night, we'd be headed out of Waianae to emba...
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