toIt is located about 500 km from the southern coast of Baja California, a group of ancient volcanic islands known as the Revillagiedo Archipelago. A home to the big big species including whale sharks and royal hammer heads, rugged volcanic peaks once also the site of unlikely friendship.
It started in December 1988 when Terry Kennedy, an 83 -year -old American sailor with floors, met with the giant Pacific Ray Beach with a six -meter off the shore of San Bendicto Island. He continues to name Willie. “When I saw him next to the boat, as it was, I only had to enter water to see it,” says Kennedy. “I threw a tank and jumped, but I did not see it anywhere.
Together, on that day and over the coming decades, the two rode through water, as Willie Kennedy took around the underwater peak peaks and with two miles, only to restore Kennedy always to his boat. Now, after 37 years, their unlikely friendship will be explored in a new documentary entitled The Last Dive, released on Sunday before a series of limited offers in the United States and New Zealand.
In that, Kennedy begins on a last trip to the island in the hope of reunification with Ray. With his focus on the relationship between man and the monster, he will undoubtedly draw similar aspects to the 2020 documentary in Netflix for the year 2020 The Octopus Teacher, who told the animation of how Craig Foster’s knowledge of Akhtabar.
Film maker Cody Shehi hopes to show the movie “inspiring a completely new generation” to fall in love with the ocean. “For me, he is personal,” he says. “I live with my two -year -old wife and daughter on sailing boats. Every night, I was drifting with the sound of the ocean while slapping our body. For the past twenty years, I saw life in the ocean.”
When Kennedy and Willie met, they were very few divers The harmful effects This can come by touching a wild animal – a practice it was Prohibited Globally Through Federal Protected Marine areas and diving sites. The harmful effects of physical touch It includes Great stress and behavioral changes via mantas.
However, at the time, Willie shapes, with his four distinctive black points in the shape of diamonds on his right shoulder, Kennedy, an indescribable bond of confidence and respect that Kennedy has documented with his video camera. Upon arrival at Kennedy’s boat and slapped his overburden on the temple, Willie was waiting for Kennedy to climb on his back before sitting to ride throughout the island.
On multiple occasions, Willie Kennedy helped locate the abandoned window. “He pushed me madness one day in an attempt to attract my attention,” says Kennedy. “Finally, I moved from the other divers, got his back, took me and ran down. The next thing I knew, I see the next bottom, and there is this giant network, much larger than anything I saw before.
“I realized early, he took me to the full ocean of the network. He was deliberately showing me what was there, and how much was it.” In two days, Kennedy continued to connect, as well as a large submarine and the marine, raised 17050 meters from the network.
Once again, Willie put himself between Kennedy and the wonderful shark during a Kennedy dive.
“I turned and went up in front of me and was a kind of calm for me, back and forth. I thought he wanted to go to a ride, but I was taking the right, he exploded to the right. I couldn’t understand what was going on with him. Finally I did the number and crowd and looked around, and there were 18 feet of the great hammer,” says Kennedy in the last echo.
“I thought about myself,” stand. Willie Hamayti, “he adds.
With the largest percentage of the brain to the body compared to other fish, Mantas is very smart creatures. As strange filth nutrients, mantas can Learn about They themselves in the mirror, which indicates a rare sign of self -awareness Just similar To a few animals, including priority, elephants and dolphins.
However, these easy easy creatures are listed threatening Under the Law of Endangery species in the United States, with thousands Targeting and killing are Every year for trade in sensitive nutrition gills or just hunting it through legal and illegal fisheries.
Kennedy’s friendship with Willie, not only his approach to wildlife underwater, but also pushed Kennedy, then the big fish fisherman in the game, to his unlikely role to preserve.
In 1994, Kennedy seized the camera Mantas slaughtered multiple On Valentine’s Day on Saint -Pindicto Island – including those that swam with Kennedy the day before. After the accident, which prompted an international protest, Kennedy became a sound supporter of federal fishing systems, and successfully pushed the Mexican government To announce Resilagiedo Archiplaago is a protected marine reserve at the national level.
“What happened in San Benedictto, I said greatly,” This is enough for me. “I prefer to shoot them with the camera, and since that day forward, I have faced the big fish that will already beaten me.
Kennedy’s relationship with the ocean has evolved over the years. The “troubled child” who was originating in California in California began to dive at the age of 12-his first diving was a 200-foot diving on his own. He served in the US Navy in Vietnam and then was an Angel Hello motorcycle, the owner of the bar and a wild wild -lived his boat – which was called Erotica – on the Pacific Ocean.
But as his relationship with radiology deepened, he found that he was the smallest underwater. For Kennedy, who did more than 14,000 diving: “My world starts when I go down the surface.” Since the Willie’s meeting, this world has become one and his collaborators in the oceans devoted to preserving it.
Amid a Global decrease In Mantas and a height in a bad organization Diving Leave them frequently injured Its fragile ecosystems systems, the need to protect Mantas is more urgent than ever. “There are a lot of diving boats there if we do not dive with them responsibly, this may affect how this [the rays] “You feed under water,” says Shehi.
Sheei, who drowned with Kennedy in the archipelago, refers to the traffic on boats, saying: “Mantas wants to reach the top, difficult to see and collide with boats. I think this is the real pressure that the tourism we need to talk about.”
The urgency to increase marine regulations also comes as the Donald Trump administration offers a serious example of other countries to ignore environmental protection. The latest United States Environmental declines from Commercial hunting ads to Delete Because endangered species threaten the general luxury of marine wildlife.
Despite the rare, the link between Kennedy and Willie offers a profound glimpse of a possible joint bond when these creatures give an opportunity to live and prosper.
Kennedy says: “Willie explained to me what to do, and I just did it,” Kennedy says.
