Swim with whale sharks

This last week I (Josh) got to check two new things off my bucket list. The first one was that I swam with a whale shark, the biggest fish on earth, and second, I swam with a manta ray, the biggest species of rays.  Although I cheated and did it in an aquarium instead of the open ocean, it was everything I dreamed of.

Before the swim

We (my brother Jake and I) totally lucked out and ended up being at the Georgia Aquarium on a day where we had the 6.3 million gallon tank all to ourselves...I guess we technically shared the tank with the guides, a few sharks, some rays, and a couple thousand other fish, but that was it.  On top of having the tank to ourselves, our swim took place after the aquarium had closed so Matthias, Lizzy, and Grandma Garn had the whole aquarium to their selves.  The only sad thing was that the only day that worked for Jake and me didn't work out for Cheryl.  So sad for her. :(

So I'm not quite sure how I became so fascinated with this stuff as my childhood (growing up in the mountain west) only allowed me to see the ocean a handful of times, but I am fascinated.  I remember as a little kid that I had a poster of a ray jumping over a boat and I always dreamed that I could have been on that boat as it jumped.  As a 19 year old I watched a program about scuba diving in the ocean, and it made me so excited that I promptly drove to the local Burley, Idaho Walmart and bought cheap fins, a snorkel, and a mask....only to one week later leave on a two year mission where swimming wasn't even allowed.  That was the day that I put being a scuba diver on my bucket list.

After I got back from my mission, I got married and quickly convinced my wife (and my parents) to become certified to scuba dive with me.  My first dive was in the middle of the winter, in a warm spring crater in Heber, Utah.  We have since been diving in Malaysia, the Mediterranean (near Italy), the Bahamas, and in Mexico (near Playa del Carmen), and I long for the day when I am no longer plagued with the poverty associated with being a student so that we can do more.

Every dive really feels like a gift from God.  Even the ones where I found myself sea sick and throwing up 30 feet under the water...which, by the way, is actually really tricky when you account for that whole breathing thing.  Anyways, yesterday I used all of my Christmas and birthday money, that I'm sure I was supposed to spend on food storage and school clothes so that I could take that swim, but it was worth every penny and much more.  A truly life altering experience.

Even watching the video below will hardly do justice for how awesome this was, but enjoy!

Was so fun to have Matthias and Lizzy there!

Stare down with the grouper

Grandma Garn's view of us from the tunnel