Conch Salad TV- Fowl Cay: The Diving Experience

Abaco’s Fowl Cay became a Bahamian National Park in 2009, 35 years after the first proposal for its protection was submitted to the Government. A later video will look at that process, this is the story of divers and their experience at Fowl Cay. The dive industry was a major factor in the Park’s creation. Diving is an important factor in the Bahamian economy and a mainstay of the ecotourism industry.



Tune in every 2 weeks for a visual exploration of real life in The Bahamas, far from the tourist scene. Conch Salad TV doesn't just give you information about The Bahamas, but instead, through videos, captures island life in its most natural state. Hope you enjoy it, leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Grand Bahama resident to be inducted into The Women Divers Hall of Fame

2009 Interview with Cristina Zenato by Lyndah Wells

By The Bahamas Weekly News Team

Freeport, Bahamas - Local resident and head of diving at UNEXSO, Cristina Zenato has recently been advised that she will be inducted in The Women's Divers Hall of Fame. The official induction of WDHOF Honorees is made annually at the Beneath the Sea (BTS) Expo, which is held in March at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, NJ.

"I feel very honored and humbled to have been included in the highest recognition for wo men in diving. I have always looked at the women in the Hall of Fame as my inspiration and now I am side by side with them. This is an incredible opportunity to be able to expand my message to the next generations," Zenato told The Bahamas Weekly.

This past half year Cristina has become famous on the internet for her participation as a model and shark handler in a video produced by Joe Romeira called Nino Salerosa which has presently over 200,000 views on YouTube. Just today (January 20th) Zenato is being featured on the NBC Today Show for her participation in Mermaids in Motion along with Hollywood special effects artist Allan B Holt, with underwater footage by Grant W. Graves and Ric Frazier Production.

The Women Divers Hall of Fame™ (WDHOF) is an international

non-profit professional honor society whose member contributions span a wide variety of fields including: The Arts, Science, Medicine, Sports, Exploration, Marine Archeology, Media, Service, Dive Training and Education, Safety, Business, Marine Environment and Conservation, Free Diving, Commercial Diving, and Military Diving.

Cristina Zenato started diving in 1994, and has made the Bahamas home and diving her life. She lives her passion,which is Ocean conservation. Photo: Thaddius Bedford

 Created in 1999 and incorporated in 2001 by six founding sponsors: Beneath the Sea, Inc., the Underwater Society of America, the Women’s Scuba Association, Women Underwater, Hillary Viders, Ph.D., and Capt. Kathy A. Weydig; WDHOF, Inc. was granted its 501(c)(3) status in 2002.


WDHOF's two-part mission is to:

1. Recognize women divers who have made outstanding contributions to the exploration, understanding, safety and enjoyment of our underwater world and
2. Support the underwater world and its associated careers by promoting opportunities for women and men in diving through scholarships, internships and mentorship opportunities and a worldwide network of industry contacts.


The following is written by Eddy Raphael who works with Zenato at UNEXSO:

Born in Italy, Cristina Zenato grew up in the rain forests of 1970’s African Congo until the age of 15, and naturally developed a love of the outdoors. Her tremendous passion for the ocean surfaced at a young age, and following her love for the water she journeyed to The Bahamas for work, and learned to dive..



16 years later she is still proudly working for The Underwater Explorers Society (UNEXSO), and from her humble beginnings as a Scuba Instructor, she climbed the ladder to become the head of diving at UNEXSO, teaching technical diving, plus cave and cavern classes.
When Cristina is not working, she can usually be found freediving or exploring new cave systems.

 Speaking five different languages, Italian, English, German, French and Spanish, Cristina became a tour de force – a PADI, NAUI, SSI, SDI, open water instructor, NSS-CDS full cave instructor, Extended Range Instructor, TDI advanced Nitrox with decompression procedure and more, she is a talented young lady.



With sharks and caves part of her daily work Zenato uses them to address important issues of ocean management, water conservation and garbage disposal. Cristina also volunteers her time to explore and map cave systems providing vital information to extend their protection and conservation. She helps in the creation of marine parks with a recent emphasis on protecting the sharks in the Bahamas and the world. Cristina also helps educate local school children teaching them to dive through rescue diver believing there is great power in education. Photo: Arek Pers

 Cristina’s love of exploration and caving is inspiring, yet it pales when it comes to Sharks. Some would say Cristina has a natural ‘gift’ with Sharks. Practicing a little known technique of rubbing and manipulating her fingers across the ampullae of Lorenzini, the visible dots [electro-receptive sensory organs] all around a shark’s head and face, she induces a tonic immobility. To the observer, this looks like a shark falling asleep right in her lap.

Last fall (2010) a Blue shark appeared to fall asleep in her hands, on the surface. As she caressed the beautiful ten foot ocean traveler. The fact that she had no chain-mail suit on for this occasion never seemed to cross her mind.

 Her ability to work with several types of shark in this manner has allowed her to study up close, in the wild, with no stress from the usual hooks, gaffs, and undue pain some shark researchers have used to gather data. In fact, the sharks surrounding her home in The Bahamas almost seem to know her for her gentle spirit, and warm to her touch. Guests are on occasion, encouraged to feel the shark’s skin while in this calm state. This in turn gives visiting divers on the Shark Dive at UNEXSO the chance to dissolve any misconceptions or preconceptions they may have had about shark life. She teaches divers who are interested, to feed the local Caribbean Reef sharks by hand, hoping to bring people closer to understanding the secret world of these creatures.

First learning to feed sharks with her mentor [the legendary Ben Rose] Cristina has researched shark behavior, and comparison and change in sharks. From the Bimini Shark Lab, South Africa, North Carolina, Florida and Mexico, Cristina writes a few short stories and reports for newsletters about sharks, [and also cave diving and training] having observed the behaviors of Tigers, Great Whites, Lemons, Reefs, and Bulls. She has further developed her practice of tonic immobility, to remove hooks from shark’s mouths, to remove parasites, and for her Awareness Campaign against shark finning and capture, for shark protection, and human education.

Naturally, all this talent sparked up the attention of filmmakers, documentary and TV producers worldwide, and as you might imagine, the list of film and TV work Cristina has achieved is immense. Just a few on the TV list are BBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, ABC, Science and Nature programs all over Europe and the USA. Films which include her are Der See Wolf, Shark Water, Shark Man, Oceans, including non-profits like Gimme-A-Hug / Protect the Sharks Foundation.



Cristina has also been involved in magazines like Skin Diver, Sport Diver, Advance Diver Magazine and also working on calendars to fund shark awareness, and the list goes on. Needless to say, on her home island of Grand Bahama, Cristina works closely with the Bahamas National Trust, and has been awarded the rights/permit to dive the guarded Ben’s Cave, further forging a conservation alliance with them to re-draw the map of Ben’s, in aid to protect the delicate cave system.



Look for her in the next shark program you watch, she might well be lurking next to the lens negotiating with the shark to not worry about these odd people staring at them.. A sense of who Cristina Zenato is can only truly be felt underwater. There, she is more at home than she is on land, and an apt quote by Jacques Cousteau says it all:

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.”



Blue-hole caverns a mystery of the deep

photo: Wes C. Skiles

On the long list of reasons why few scientists have dared plumb the mysteries of the Bahamas' famed blue holes, the toxic swamp gas actually rates pretty low.  

By Curtis Morgan

Miami Herald Staff Writer
On the long list of reasons why few scientists have dared plumb the mysteries of the Bahamas' famed blue holes, the toxic swamp gas actually rates pretty low. Hydrogen sulfide gas, a byproduct of bacteria and plant debris rotting for eons, gets trapped in a murky zone called the halocline where dense salt water mixes with fresh rain water floating above. In some submarine caverns, swimming through the foul layer leaves divers with burning skin, retching stomachs or worse. That says a lot about the daunting challenges below: utter blackness, uncharted and claustrophobic passages, walls that crumble into clouds of silt, shifting currents and extreme depths that demand exotic diving gear, elaborate safety systems and Zen cool. For Kenny Broad, a University of Miami scientist who led a National Geographic Society-backed expedition that made 150 dives into blue holes on Abaco, Andros and other islands, the rewards far exceeded the risks.

The team, composed of expert cave divers and researchers from UM, the National Museum of the Bahamas, Florida Museum of Natural History and other universities, emerged from the dark caverns with findings that could shed new light across fields from natural history to microbiology to climate change.

``These holes are a time capsule of evolutionary science,' said Broad, who will describe the exploration during a free National Geographic-sponsored program Saturday evening at UM. ``They're a modern-day window into what it was like millions of years ago.'

Starved of light and oxygen that typically fuels decay, the blue holes have produced an array of stunningly preserved fossils, from brown bones of ancient native Lucayans to shells of long-extinct land tortoise and freshwater crocodiles once thought to live only in Cuba.

The caverns are also places of weird life and other-worldly beauty, a combination that put the expedition on the cover of last month's National Geographic. Broad will show many of the eerie, breath-taking images and video captured by Wes Skiles. The renowned underwater photographer and friend of many team members died in July of still undetermined causes during a seemingly routine dive off Boynton Beach.

The holes are populated by blind cave fish, strange and tiny crabs and shrimp and masses of microbes, including never-before-seen ``extremophiles' adapted to survive the harsh environment. Ancient fossilized reefs form the walls and some passages are labyrinths of gnarled but fragile stalagmites that can evaporate in puffs of silt if struck.

``It's not buried gold but it's really a treasure,' said Nancy Albury, the project coordinator for the Bahamas' national museum, which supported much of the earliest research on the caverns and helped fund the expedition. ``It's telling us an amazing story.'

Peter Swart, a UM professor and geochemist, found a geological calendar of climate change in the buildup of sediments that shaped the stalagmites. The caves were formed during past ice ages, when rain leached into exposed limestone carving the caverns and creating the stalagmites. As the earth thawed, the rising sea filled the caverns.

Because the Bahamas are isolated far from the influence of river deposits, Swart said the blue holes' stalagmites are ideal for studying atmospheric changes. The formations show huge swings in sea level and spikes in iron from African dust, suggesting intense periods of drought, he said.

``There was some variation, but generally speaking sea level has gone up 300 to 400 feet in the last 20 million years,' he said. ``It was much higher in the past than it is at the present time.'

Broad, an assistant professor of ecosystems science and a submarine-cave authority at UM's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, credits the work of Albury and Brian Kakuk -- an expert caver and guide who has explored more of the islands' holes than anyone else -- for drawing wider research interest.

Kakuk was working as a diver for the U.S. Navy on Andros Island when he took his first plunge, right about the time researchers first discovered the remains of ancient Lucayans in one of the dozens of inland blue holes peppering the island chains. As he began discovering fossils in places no diver had ever visited, he became more and more fascinated by formations that many locals used for waste dumps or considered haunted.

``I kind of took on a role of showing people why it's an amazing place and not just a dark scary hole,' Kakuk said.

In 2004, while guiding a diver in the Sawmill Sink on Abaco, he stumbled on something that would put the Bahamas on the map of paleontologists -- spotting a shell in the sediment that looked like no sea turtle he knew. It turned out to be an unknown species of land tortoise, last trundling the Bahamas 2,000 years before humans arrived.

Soon, he and Albury, who is also a cave diver, were finding more and more. Albury, who is now pushing to create a blue hole park on Abaco and expand protections for them, turned her guest house into a lab to permanently preserve the growing collection. Kakuk, who was the expeditions' dive safety officer, has helped researchers identify so many microscopic animals that he has four named after him.

``To me, it comes back to the big picture of how special these places are,' Kakuk said. ``How many people, especially as a nonscientist, have the opportunity to find new species?'

Broad, a cave-diving authority named an ``emerging explorer' by National Geographic Society, thought the holes promising enough that he secured society and National Science Foundation funding for a deeper look -- figuratively and literally. Some dives took researchers down as far as 275 feet.

With the deepest cavern -- Dean's hole on Long Island -- documented at 663 feet, there is a lot left to explore, perhaps 80 percent of the caverns by Kakuk's estimate. And to study, Broad said.

``Underwater caves are certainly the least understood ecosystems on the planet,' he said. ``We're just scratching the surface.'

Blue holes don't go just straight down; they widen into a maze of uncharted holes, tunnels and caverns -- foolhardy diving for anyone without experience, training and the high-tech gear required for long dives at extreme depths.

In one cavern, the researchers encountered a disturbing reminder of the danger -- the remains of a diver, clad in scuba gear from the 1970s. It's been left undisturbed for decades, Kakuk said, at the request of the ill-fated explorer's family.

(VIDEO) Extreme Cave Diving in The Bahamas - Tonight on PBS

"Extreme Cave Diving" premieres Tuesday, February 9 at 8PM ET/PT on PBS (please check local listings). Watch the TV commercial within.

"Extreme Cave Diving" follows a fearless team of scientists as they venture into blue holes—underwater caves that formed during the last ice age, when sea level was nearly 400 feet below what it is today.

These caves, little-known treasures of The Bahamas, are one of Earth's least explored and perhaps most dangerous frontiers. The interdisciplinary team of biologists, climatologists, and anthropologists, led by renowned cave explorer Kenny Broad, discover intriguing evidence of the earliest human inhabitants of the islands, find animals seen nowhere else on Earth, and recover a remarkable record of the planet's climate.

The stakes are high as the scientists swim hundreds of feet through narrow, dark passages that have trapped and killed divers in the past, but the scientific payoff is considerable.

Upcoming personal Interviews

"Lady" - our most elegant Caribbean Reef Shark companion for many years (Bahamas)

(Photograph: Wolfgang Leander, 2000)


We at taste of Grand Bahama, live on a wonderful island with pretty interesting people who do all sorts to earn a living.
Every month We will focus on one of these residents and we are pleased to let you know that this month, we have an interview scheduled with the famed Cristina Zenato of UNEXSO.
Cristina is world renown for her Cave diving but even more so for her dedication and work with the Caribbean Reef sharks.
Cristina Zenato was born in Italy, in 1971, grew up in in the middle of the rain forest of the Congo Africa till the age of 15, and has been working and living in Grand Bahama for 14years.
She is currently UNEXSO Diving Supervisor and Dive Instructor who is recognized as a Shark Dive professional.
If you're looking to experience an underwater world that most Grand Bahama residents & tourists never even dream of, she's the woman to contact.
Stay logged on for our exclusive interview which will be posted on Friday 3rd July.