Previously I wrote about setting New Year’s resolutions and why I believe it is important to listen to your gut before putting ink to paper and finalizing your goals.
Setting a New Year’s resolution has become tradition, whether a person makes a promise to do an act of self-improvement or just something slightly nice, such as opening doors for people beginning from New Year’s Day.
Towards the end of 2015 for the first time I started to read some of my old diaries from my childhood through to my twenties and I noticed that I often explicitly listed things I wanted to do at least once in my life. Now in my 30’s I start to wonder, how long my life will be… and have I done anything on my wish list? With luck I see that I have but the boxes ticked are few in comparison to the total of the complete list.
This year, I have decided to RELATE my New Year’s resolutions to my Bucket List. Meaning that I don’t just want to exercise more, but rather, I want to participate in my first ever triathlon. So from now on my training will become more planned and I have a visual goal and timeline.
I’m a great aficionada of animals, and being a Pisces you could say that as a fish I particularly also love diving and the whole underwater world that comes with Scuba activities. Our Aqua Blue stiletto currently supports IFAW (www.ifaw.org) who do amazing work worldwide. I recently took a private trip down to Valencia in Spain where I had the opportunity to tick-off one more of my Bucket List points before the end of 2015: Diving with sharks.
Naturally as much as we are all in awe of these amazing creatures we of course also have the ultimate respect for them and the reservations that come with being in such a raw and unprecedented close vicinity to these predators, which can be over whelming.
The team at the L’Oceanogràfic do an amazing job. Those of us fortunate enough to go diving alongside one of their experienced professionals not only get to see the elegance of these hunters in a almost one-to-one ecosystem but are also faced with the brutal reality of our own incorrect preconceived views of these creatures.
All the sharks in the oceanarium are rescues from fishermen nets or worse. We specifically went for the Sand Tiger shark but the tank contained many more such as the Sandbar shark, the Green Sawfish and countless Stingrays and so on reaching to 51 different species. In 7,000,000 liters of Mediterranean water there is enough room for the 1350 individual inhabitants.
Overwhelmed by the experience and the valued information given by the instructor. It truly saddens me that these shark species are vulnerable and listed as protected. The human being is certainly the worst predator of all.
We can’t just act and react, we have to educate as well. Organizations such as IFAW have my deepest respect for the work that they do. I feel truly fortunate for being able to fulfill one of my dreams a few days ago, but I do fear that future generations may not be as lucky.
When setting your New Year’s resolutions, I ask you to please also to consider adding one or two with a “value-add” to the degree where the overall impact is greater than the sum of us as individuals alone.
Do please visit the Oceanogràfic (http://www.cac.es/oceanografic/) as the largest aquarium in Europe, there is much more to offer that I haven’t mentioned yet and much of their revenues are used for their rescue and conservation efforts.
Check out my self-made go-pro video of the shark diving experience on the link below and please feel free to share. The more we can bring attention to the safekeeping of these breathtaking creatures, the better!
SOCIAL MEDIA LINK: https://www.facebook.com/theglowbrand/videos/443527209182735/?theater
Music credit: Going Higher - Bensound.com
