National Geographic ADVENTURE

A Deeper Connection: Facebook for Fish

Text by Ryan Bradley
Photograph by Joshua Scott

Threatened by drift nets and habitat destruction, fish need all the friends they can get. A consortium of marine biologists has decided that to know the fiercest and fastest creatures in the sea is to love them. à la MySpace and Facebook, TOPP.org (Tagging of Pacific Predators) is an interactive website that posts personal pages—with names, stats, even blogs—for radio-tagged animals being tracked by TOPP’s field researchers.

Omoo, for example, is a great white shark currently swimming off Honolulu. Dislikes: aquariums. Mood: unfairly judged by his looks. The site’s most compelling feature is a satellite display that lets visitors pinpoint their finned friends’ locations around the globe. Can personifying pelagics make us rethink our next sushi dinner? The scientists at TOPP hope so. And somewhere off the coast of Hawaii, a misunderstood, doe-eyed killing machine named Omoo does too.

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Gear Review: Hobie ATR Standup Paddleboard

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro
Photo by Joshua Scott

Five years ago the only guys who knew what “stand-up paddleboarding” meant were pro surfers like Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama. Since then the sport has invaded beach scenes from coast to coast, attracting converts from outside the surfing world. Fitness fanatics have latched on to stand-up’s full-body workout—you stand facing forward, feet shoulder-width apart, and paddle canoe-style—while hydro-explorers have started using the boards to access hard-to-reach shorelines. The first time I tried it, I enjoyed tooling around my Southern California harbor, but the excitement wasn’t worth the hassle of schlepping an unwieldy, 30-plus-pound beast.

Now comes the Hobie ATR ($1,350). Using molded construction similar to windsurf rigs, the board weighs as little as 22 pounds. For carrying, there’s an inset handhold in the middle: easy peasy. I grabbed it with one arm, zipped across the sand, and in seconds the ATR was blasting through the water as if motorized. If you have decent balance, stability on mellow H2O should be no problem, thanks to the ATR’s lengthy, 11-foot deck (stand-up paddle surfing takes a bit more practice). Give it ten minutes—plus or minus a fall or two—and you’ll be walking on water your very first day.

We're also big fans of the Werner Spanker Paddle ($339; pictured).

Urban Climbing Stunt on NYC Tower Ignites Debate

Last Thursday (June 5), renegade urban climber Alain Robert, 45, made the first-ever attempt on the 52-story New York Times building in midtown Manhattan in the name of global warming, only to be trailed by copycat climber Renaldo Clarke. Both men face charges of reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, and disorderly conduct.

"We can't celebrate it because it is dangerous—and it's illegal," said Joe Iurato, editor of New York-based Urban Climber magazine to the Associated Press this weekend. "But some people have a strong urge to climb—even when there aren't any mountains in their back yards."

To get a better understanding of what motivates French Spider-Man Alain Robert, we've pulled an interview from our the December 2007/January 2008 issue of ADVENTURE.

Continue reading this story and weigh in with your thoughts on the debate>>

Photo Contest: Most Beautiful Places in the Parks

Photograph by Keith Ladzinski

On the recently redesigned ADVENTURE website, we've posted a national parks photo gallery where we reveal—down to the exact GPS coordinates—our picks for the most beautiful places in the parks. Now it's your turn. Send us your most spectacular park photo for the chance to have it published in the magazine and win prizes from Yakima, JanSport, and SPOT Satellite Messenger.

Outdoor News: Announcing the TOGA Awards

According to a recent study sponsored by the Nature Conservancy, outdoor recreation worldwide has declined sharply since the 1980s. While they may have the widespread, long-term research to support this statement, we know there’s good stuff going on out there—and we are on the hunt to find it.

National Geographic Maps, in collaboration with ADVENTURE magazine, has just introduced the first annual Outdoor Geographic Awareness (TOGA) Awards to celebrate the people, gear retailers, manufacturers, and NGOs who are finding new and creative ways to promote geographic awareness and build outdoor participation. The TOGA Awards reflect National Geographic's mission to inspire people to care about the planet and to encourage people of all ages to explore their world.

Applications and nominations will be accepted online at www.natgeomaps.com/toga through Friday, June 27, 2008. The awards will be presented on Friday, August 8, 2008, at 4 p.m., at Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City.

Beyond Green Travel with Costas Christ Oman's Road Less Traveled

American travelers’ current reluctance to travel to the Middle East, egged on by media hype about danger and Islamic fear-mongering, has left Oman almost entirely to the young Europeans now flocking there.

Our loss is their big gain. I just spent seven days kayaking the along the Straights of Hormuz, some 20 miles from the Iran border, and trekking on the Ru’us Al Jebel mountain plateau on Oman’s Musandam Peninsula. My verdict? Pack your bags and go if you can. The intense heat and bone-dry terrain do add up to one of the most inhospitable places I have come across (the best months for travel are October to April), but it is also one of the most stunningly beautiful places I have been—and has the potential to stay this way.

Continue reading this story >>

The Best New Surf Movie Not About Surfing

Text by Assistant Editor Ryan Bradley
Photograph courtesy Magnolia Pictures

Surfwise is not a documentary film about surfing. For this reason, it’s the best movie about surfing to come out in a good long while. Confused? Fair enough. Let me try to explain.

Continue reading this story>>

Kayakers Find Big Water on China’s Salween River

Filed April 28 by Kyle Dickman
Photographs by Adam Mills Elliott

It's been a phenomenal week of kayaking for the Epicocity crew on southwest China's Salween River. Himalayan snowmelt left the Salween swollen with rapids that were the biggest and most exciting we've paddled over the past two months.

Continue reading this story>>

Read previous stories about this expedition>>

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro The Five Best Things About Returning to Civilization CELEBRITY EDITION!

Nothing says home like a plate of steaming haggis.
—Adventurer Colin Angus

It only takes a couple weeks in the backcountry to make you—well, me—miss steamed milk, unmelted chocolate, and pillows. But what about hard-core adventurers? Maybe they’re so core, they don’t miss a thing. Maybe they make us look like the big, fat wussies we really are ... or do they?

Read on and see what these seasoned vets miss when they're out there.

Featuring: Adventurers Julie and Colin Angus; ice climber Will Gadd; climber Mike Libecki; surfer Kassia Meador; long-distance hiker Andrew Skurka

Continue reading this story and see photos >>

The Adventure Life with Steve CasimiroSurf and Ye Shall Be Asked: The Curiously Interrogative World of Gabe Sullivan

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro. Photographs by Sierra Sullivan, Tom Servais (top, bottom)

Flipping through Surfer Magazine goes something like this: blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, shocking lime green, blue, blue, blue.

There in each issue, jumping out from Surfer’s sea of epic waves and countless board short ads, is a rusty but glowing, chartreuse 1972 VW camper van, the icon and motorized doppleganger of Curious Gabe, Gabe Sullivan, who, every month, poses to ten complete strangers the kind of existential questions you’d expect to be asked in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly or in a dorm room at 1 a.m. Questions like, Does surfing improve with age? Would you rather be an East- or West-Coast surfer? And, a real brain scrambler, What’s worse—being a hoser or a poser?

Continue reading this story and see more photos>>