My Scuba Travel Bucket List.

This Mouthpiece Monday, I'm giving you the rundown of the top five items on my scuba travel bucket list and we're starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, what's going on and welcome to Divers Ready. My name's James. It is so great to see all your smiling faces out there in YouTube land. How's everybody doing? If you're new to our channel, make your next dive on our subscribe button because I use my expertise as a professional dive instructor and digital content creator to make videos with one simple goal in mind, and that's to help make you a better scuba diver. I want to start this video by saying a huge thanks to our sponsor for this week's episode, Dive Right. Those of you that watched our September update will know that we've partnered with Dive Right for a series of videos and I want to say right off the bat that the first video in that series is dropping this coming Thursday. It's going to be a bit of a special event because Dive Right have sent us a huge box of dive gear for us to give away. Basically a complete scuba setup and that's starting this coming Thursday with a video dropping at 6.30 Eastern time. You're not going to want to miss it. If you want the chance to win some of this fantastic dive equipment, you're going to have to watch that video. Thanks so much to Dive Right. On with the show, my top five travel bucket list items. I'm a big fan of having a bucket list. I'm a big fan of writing down your goals, your dreams, your aspirations and sending that out into the universe because it's kind of like when you think about buying a new car and you think, oh I'd really like to buy this particular car, and all of a sudden you start seeing them everywhere. Some of that happens through the wonders of digital technology that they start serving you up ads because, you know, the bots, the robots, they're listening, right? And some of that happens because you're programming your brain to look for what you've told it you want. I've been very lucky in my life. I've done a lot of traveling. Again, regular viewers of this channel will know that I used to work on ships and that afforded me not just the opportunity to travel with work, but also in between stints on the ships I used to go off and have all these crazy adventures in rafting and climbing and scuba diving and I got to see a lot of cool stuff. Got a lot of ticks on my bucket list. There's still more things outstanding. Let's take a look. Number one on the list is the Great Lakes of the United States. Regular viewers of the channel will not in any way be surprised by that. We were supposed to go this summer, but then of course Covid happened and that's what that was. If you saw last week's video, you know that Jimmy Godomski was talking about his trip to the Great Lakes and how just pristine and perfect these historical wrecks are sitting perfectly on their keel. Some of them quite deep and dark and in fresh water, low oxygen, perfectly preserved with their mass still standing up. To me, that's something very special. We have great wreck diving here in South Florida. I'm diving fantastic wrecks week in, week out. I've done Truk. I've done Scapa Flow. Again, fantastic places for wreck diving, but nowhere in the world has the quality of wrecks that the Great Lakes do. So, super excited for that. Don't think it's going to happen next year because we've already got a ton planned for 2021, but hopefully 2022 I'll finally get the Great Lakes trip ticked off. I know I mentioned that I want to do it in other videos and I was inundated with emails and comments that, hey, look, here's a tip. Here's an operator. I'm up here. Come dive with me. I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you. Thank you all. I love this community for exactly that reason. I put it out there and all of a sudden I've got like a million invites of couches to crash on or dive boats to join up with. So, thank you to everyone who jumped on the last time I said I was going to do the Great Lakes. Number two is the Cocos Islands of Costa Rica. I used to work in Costa Rica. I worked there for a very short period of time as a rafting guide on some of the wilder rivers. And the thing I loved about Costa Rica is they are a global pioneer in ecotourism. They recognize that they do depend on tourist dollars, but they're not willing to sacrifice their natural resources to claim that money. And the Cocos Islands are a perfect example of that. They're a pristine marine habitat off the Pacific side of Costa Rica that can be viewed kind of like a northern Galapagos. They have an amazing amount of biodiversity. I've just never had the chance to dive there and it's been burning a hole on my bucket list for a very long time. I need to get that one ticked off. I'm putting it out there in the universe. If anybody knows operators out there or can recommend specific dive sites or ways to get out there and do the Cocos Islands, I'm all ears. Let me know in the comments below. Number three is Choco Colombia. Bit of a strange one this. Let me tell you the story. When I was doing my instructor development course in Utila, Honduras, there was a gentleman on that course by the name of Andres from Colombia. We became very good friends. We lost contact for a couple years. We've come back into contact through the wonders of Facebook. And he is heavily involved with Colombia underwater expeditions. And they run expeditions to the Pacific coast of Colombia to a region called Choco. In Choco, they have a humpback whale migration, they have a goliath grouper aggregation, and they have a sardine migration similar to what we're doing next year in South Africa. So I think it would be really cool to get down there, see my buddy, and go on one of his expeditions and go out there and see this unusual, wild, rugged coast of Colombia. That makes my bucket list. I like to do things that are off the beaten path, that aren't the norm, that aren't the touristy stuff. I like to do the touristy stuff too because there's a reason it's touristy. But this just appeals to me because it's like something that not many people have heard of. Number four is I would like to go spearfishing for halibut. Short while ago, my wife and I had a dinner party at our house and one of our friends was showing us a Instagram account of these guys who were spearfishing for halibut in Iceland. And some of the shots they were getting and some of the fish they were catching were just out of this world. Now, halibut is one of my favorite fish to eat. I love all seafood. And those of you that watched the dive locker reveal video will know that I've got quite a nice spear gun. When I'm not teaching, I really love spearfishing. I am a spearo. I love to get out there and hunt for my supper. And it's a very ecological way of enjoying the bounty of the ocean. I'd much rather go out and be species specific, in fact, specimen specific in my hunting and just catch enough to feed myself and my wife rather than rely on commercial fishing and then nondescript dragging of drift nets through the oceans and just catching everything in their path, which absolutely horrifies me. So I do do enjoy spearfishing and halibut is my favorite fish to eat. You know I'm not scared of cold water. So when I saw these shots that these guys were taking, I was like, that's going on the bucket list. Thank you, please. Number five. As I've said, I've been very lucky in my career to have done a lot of awesome traveling. I've actually been to 177 countries. And when people ask me, well, what's your favorite? That's the inevitable question. I always have one singular answer. Japan. If I could live anywhere, if it was no option, no limitation, I would move to Japan in a heartbeat. I love the food. I love the people. I love the countryside. I love the cities. It is an amazing place, but I've never scuba dived in Japan. Now there's a prefecture in the Southern islands, the very, very South of the country called Okinawa. It's got a very big expat community and they enjoy a Mediterranean climate. And I've been following a bunch of people on Instagram. I'll link them in the description below that run dive trips around the Okinawa islands. And like I said, beautiful crystal clear turquoise waters, just like the Mediterranean. So why wouldn't I want to go and do my favorite sport in my favorite country? My wife's never been to Asia. So this is one I'm really fixated on making happening very, very soon. You can expect my full report on this channel. So again, the point of this video guys is to give you some inspiration. 2020 has been a crappy year. And I'm sure a lot of you guys had trips planned that were going to be bucket list ticks for you. And my message is don't lose faith. 2021 will be better and years following will be better again still. Dive travel will recover. So keep the faith, make your bucket list. In fact, you know what? Homework for all of you. In the comment section below, I want to see one, two, three, four, five. If COVID and time and money were no option at all, where would you go diving? Where would you like to go diving? I want to see what happens when you put it out there in the universe and then people read your comment and they comment on, oh, I know a guy that runs a dive shop there. You should connect with them and this, that, and the other and see those kinds of threads built. Will you do that for me? I want to say thank you again to Dive Right for sponsoring this video and for the upcoming series. Don't miss the video that's dropping on Thursday. If you want a chance to win a whole selection of dive gear from Dive Right, it's going to be massive. Ladies and gentlemen, until next time, this was your mouthpiece Monday for this week from Divers Ready. Go make those bucket lists. Dream big. Dive safe. Dive often, guys.