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Hi, beautiful manta rays!

The next significant a-ha moment that happened on my Ocean Conservation journey was with a group of four friends, early in 2024. We played the “what-if…what-would-you-do” game.

What if you had 5 hundred euros (to spend on something really important for you), what would you do? I would enroll in an underwater photography course, I answered.

What if you had 5 thousand euros, what would you do? I would spend three weeks scuba diving with manta rays and helping with their conservation.

What if you had 5 hundred thousand euros, what would you do? I would buy a house in Crête, near the beach, and live there.

A few days later, I caught myself researching manta ray vacations and scuba diving (I had never done any scuba diving). Unfortunately (or fortunately…), my husband was not keen on spending 12 days on a boat diving with manta rays in the Maldives. After contacting the Manta Trust organisation that organizes such trips, I realized I’d need my diving certifications first. So I signed up for diving courses at my local dive club. Over the next year, I obtained the following PADI certifications: Open Water Diver, Advanced Open Water, Dry Suit Diver, and Nitrox Enriched Air. I also met a very interesting group of passionate individuals and made new friends among the dive club members.

On top of that, I was attracted by the freediving section of my local dive club. When I saw them getting ready by the side of the pool, they looked like a group of cool gurus doing meditation and then gliding effortlessly and silently through the water. I decided to try it out, to see what it was like, and so I earned my Basic Freediver PADI certification. Freediving is both similar to and different from scuba diving. It’s much more physical (you have to hold your breath for as long as safely possible underwater), and it requires much less equipment.

I needed to get some skills in documentary film making so I enrolled in two online courses, one by Luc Forsyth, a Canadian DP (director of photography), and another one from AOD (The Art Of Documentary), The Perfect Cut, to learn film editing and the program DA VINCI RESOLVE. I set my sights on the International Nature Film Festival of Namur in Belgium. Perhaps I could put together a five-minute film of underwater shots taken during my next vacation in Greece, and enter the contest.

Meanwhile, I also organised my 50th birthday party, on the theme of the ocean. I had a deep-sea photo booth, nautical decorations, and a giant screen where underwater scenes of turtles, whales, and manta rays were projected. I wanted my guests to have a truly immersive ocean experience! Of course, it was a costume party with a theme of the ocean.

If I were going to be a documentary filmmaker of ocean conservation films, I needed equipment, so I acquired a GOPRO, a drone, and a hydrophone (a microphone for recording sound underwater). During my next vacation in Greece (Thessaloniki, the Sithonia Peninsula, and Thassos), in the fall of 2024, I made good use of my equipment while snorkeling (except my drone because I wasn’t sure if I could fly it in Greece, and I didn’t want to get it confiscated).

Next, in the spring of 2025, my husband and I went on a diving trip to Bonaire in the Caribbean with the local diving club AND our good friends we had visited in Oman, ten years back. The coral reefs were just as magical and enchanting as the snorkeling experience in Oman. I captured much of it on film (GOPRO), hopefully it will be useful for my second five-minute documentary film on ocean conservation.

Enough for now!

Start doing ocean conservation!