AN INTERVIEW WITH GIL TABORA | DIVING + LIFE ON UTILA

Gil is one of our greatest friends from our time spent on Utila, and it truly is a friendship that goes far beyond a short 3 months on a little island. He was our divemaster when we started our open water course, alongside our other amazing friend, Ashley. They both became fast friends and are such sweet humans. 

When my friends and I got to Utila, it was definitely a leap of faith: exciting, fulfilling, but still with challenges. As soon as we met Gil, he made the island feel like home for us.

I am so grateful for Gil and all of the amazing memories we share with him. He is such a special friend. In this blog post, Gil has so generously shared stories, inspirations, and passions surrounding diving and his life on Utila.

What about diving inspires you?

Since I was a kid, my childhood dream was to be a marine biologist. Probably the inspiration started by watching the movies of Flipper and Free Willy over and over again, and I always had that passion of knowing more about nature and animals, and in particular marine animals. I still remember being a little kid watching documentaries on discovery channel and animal planet on bed while my dad was scratching my little head. Unfortunately, I couldn’t study marine biology, and my dad couldn’t stay long enough in this life for me to share with him all of my experiences. There was a better dream that I didn’t know I had, and even less that I was going to accomplish, was to become a scuba diver, and a professional diver. So somehow, my childhood dream of sharing experiences underwater became true, and diving gives me that joy of keep exploring and learning more about sea creatures and sharing those memories and knowledge to others. It inspires me to keep doing what I do, diving and meeting new people and the connections and bonds that we experience while being underwater. It is literally something out of this land.

What is your craziest story underwater?

As a professional diver, you build a lot of experiences, most of them for good, and luckily few of them for bad. I could mention crazy ones like getting the bends, or life changing like swimming with a whale shark for the first time. But my top pick would be when I saw my first bottle nose dolphin while scuba diving, I was joining a fun dive with my mentor and favorite instructor “Anthony”, at a dive site named “Moon Hole” a very frequent site that I know like the palm of my hand, while he was teaching to one of my best friends a advance open water course, at the end of the dive, while we were doing our safety stop, my friend started to point something behind us, and when we both turn our heads around, a single dolphin was swimming at about 10 meters from us, those type of encounters are once on a lifetime, that even my friend got a tattoo of that dolphin

What brought you to Utila?

Ironically, most of the people come to utila for diving, partying, and drinking, but for me was not the case, or that I would have love to be my answer, but actually yes, I came with my friends to party and celebrate that we all were about to finish our studies and career in medicine. So I visited the island for 5 days. Later to that, my studies request to do a social service, to be able to finish and graduated as medicine doctor, and so I volunteered to do it on the bay islands, but mostly I wanted to be on Utila, because I was going to be in a wonderful place full of amazing people and mostly, closer to the ocean. So far in life, I still believe that has been my most important decision I’ve ever made in life and with no regrets at all. Those 5 days well spend it with my friends, became in a full year of unforgettable experiences.

How does diving give you a greater sense of purpose and / or a broader outlook on life?

That our human life is short, and we shall live it to the fullest. Knowing that some of the animals that are down there have been here for hundreds or maybe thousands of years (corals) and how our human lifestyles are impacting the world, it makes me feel very disappointed and depressed of our actions. As divers we get to be in touch with the worlds biggest ecosystem that is the ocean, and it makes us feel powerless to all the environmental catastrophe that affects our planet, and if we just realize how important is to maintain and conserve our oceans, we will be reassuring our future as species and this planet that we have the blessing to call home.

What are your goals and dreams for diving in the future?

My dream is to visit and dive everywhere in the world, to the most secluded places with the most beautiful corals where the ecosystem isn’t affected by humans and that they are full of life, to the ones were one day were flourishing and full of colors but they are gone now, even though it sounds a bit selfish, but getting to experience different places, makes you reconsider your goals. Hopefully in the future, I can take some actions to implement bigger projects with more impacts to our environment, to educate, conserve and protect our tiny island that is Utila.