hi from the maldives we wanted to bring you guys behind the scenes i'm with
roberto and actually how do you introduce yourself roberto carlos
and what do you do i'm a filmmaker and i've been doing documentaries from marine life
and that's in america and now we're here in maldives and the maldives has been amazing
it's been two and a half weeks that we've been out here and actually what was the highlight for
you my highlight i think was the manta rays but like massive amount i think uh two days ago the
day that we arrived here in hanifaru and i got in the middle of like maybe more than a hundred manta
rays around me it was like this is actually true so we saw over 120 manta rays and henafaru bay
is in the maldives and is known as being one of the largest uh aggregations of mantas in the world
it was i could not stop giggling under under water how many times have you swam or scuba dive
or snorkeled with manta rays with manta rays well i've been doing this every year in ecuador because
we have a lot of oceanic mantas in ecuador coast and also in the galapagos and so i don't i don't
i i haven't count that but uh but this is like something completely different because
regularly when you die with manta rays you have like one two or maximum ten manta rays
around you but not a hundred you know so it was a little bit even difficult for me to free dive
with the mantas because every time that i was coming down and i had this big traffic of mantas
coming in top of me i was like okay so how do i get back that is true they are
massive massive animals and even even for me snorkeling on the surface i found myself having
to put my hands and my legs out of the water so that i wouldn't accidentally touch or hit one
that was really a magical experience what was your other favorite thing you saw on the water
on this trip besides the manta rays well it was that day that it was not expected we were just
having dinner it was like 7 30 p.m and we were like everybody like just laughing because it was
the only day that it was it wasn't like a little bit fun because we couldn't find too many mantas
but and then we had a whale shark right next to us yeah you know also having dinner
yeah we have a little bit of lights in the in that area when we have dinner on the boat and
those lights were bringing plant so the watershed decided to start getting all that phantom yeah
right next to the boat it was like i remember sitting at dinner and someone was yelling whale
shark and i didn't believe it i was like no no no and then there was like more screaming
of excitement and then everyone jumped in the water that was really special that's actually
my first time seeing a whale shark really that was a baby one right yeah it was like six meters baby
yeah still really really really huge which was amazing i thought you were gonna say sharks in the
beginning all right yeah but tell me about your experience with the sharks and actually this one
i don't know the answer to is there a special area in the maldives that's known for seeing the sharks
that you saw or should we be have been seeing them everywhere we're at well in the southern
islands from from the maldives you have tiger sharks also treasure sharks and sometimes if you
get lucky you have school of hammerheads so it's i i ca i can highly recommend to do that dive is
is something very similar than galapagos or coco maltello because you have like school of sharks
and and also treasure sharks that are not seen like in in a lot of places yeah so
i i can recommend to all the people to to at least do two or three days trip when they come
but like the best part here i think is han farabai with all these uh aggregation of manta rays i
agree with that i would say that was definitely hanofaro was definitely the highlight of this trip
for me which by the way speaking of sharks and galapagos i'm going to link some of his amazing
videos in the description below so make sure you check them out because they're pretty epic
thank you and i'm also gonna link uh the podcast that we did together where he talked about
swimming with some of these sharks and experiences with it because so many of you ask like how are
you so daring how are you so adventurous to get into the water and i think oftentimes for
me the fears that i had before were simply by not knowing what these manta rays or sharks were like
but once you're down there and you see their behavior for me that video that i have on the
channel about diving with bull sharks i realized that you know they're really not interested in me
at all at all yeah that they can come and they can interact with you uh it's very very very fun and
even here when we were with the manta rays and i i do a lot i i do a lot of i'm trying to get
interaction with all the marine life so when i i got here i was trying to play with the mantas and
sometimes people that were right next to me they thought what is this guy doing
he's saying hi to the manta but they're they're really really smart so sometimes
when you act like that and you're trying to get an interaction with them they will also do the same
yeah so it was really fun yesterday actually we couldn't see too many mantas
we were having only like around eight to ten mantas with us still a lot only
only and they started to have a lot of interaction and those mantas stayed with us for the whole dive
it was like an hour you know and and they thought i was a little bit crazy but i'm not you had a
beautiful interaction with the turtle in the beginning also that was really fun to see you
he had his camera out and all put this footage in this video but and the turtle was just hanging
out with you almost looking like you guys were hugging each other i felt a little bit jealous
um question so how many times have you done liveaboards live aboard i don't know maybe
like a hundred times maybe where you been serious i think i think i've been a lot like i've been in
hawaii and being in in cuba on okay spoiler so this is my first liveaboard uh experience which
has been phenomenal what would you say um for someone who is curious about a liveaboard and
doing one for themselves like what do you look for or how what kind of advice would you give to them
what kind of advice depending on the place that you're visiting
like in this case uh to visit maldives i i highly recommend right now to do a liveaboard why because
you go around with two different islands and right now because of cobit if you want to move from one
of one of the islands to another one i think you have to do a pcr test and be a do a quarantine for
three days i don't know how many days but so if you are in the liverpool you can just discover all
these different places but you don't need a piece a pcr to do all that's actually an interesting
way of putting that because we very rarely if not ever got off the boat we only went
from boat to boat to water so that's actually really interesting i would also say one of the
things that was super cool about being on a liveaboard is we were going to parts of the
maltese that you don't see anybody like today is a very rare day in which we see a resort but
most frequently especially the beginning of our trip we didn't see anyone yeah and you can even
because there's no people living in the island sometimes you can get up visit a nice beach clean
with uh such a small island you know and maybe it's just stayed there for a couple of hours doing
some shots of a lot of nice videos so it's it's such an amazing it's such an amazing place here
yeah i agree okay so where can people find you oh and uh just google it my name roberto ochoa or
you can also visit uh roberto ochoa h e on youtube instagram facebook and twitter and i'll i'll
link all of those below so make sure you check them out thanks man oh deep so fun come visit