Like most little kids, I loved to spend long hours drawing, and as early records show, my favorite theme was sharks. According to my mother, long before I spoke my first word, I was fascinated by “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” TV show. Clearly, it made a strong impression on me, since before turning three, I had drawn hundreds of sharks, and even though they all had no less than ten dorsal fins, no one had any trouble recognizing what they were. Growing up in Southern California, I started surfing at an early age, and the lessons I learned in the ocean set the tone for the rest of my life. I not only learned timing, rhythm, patience, and taking calculated risks, but also respect, reverence, humility, and, most of all, a boundless joy. Years later, while researching art schools, I must admit I chose Cal State Long Beach not just because they had a very good illustration program, but because it would allow me to surf Huntington and Newport Beach on a regular basis. While attending college, I got a job with Catalina Cruises, which meant I was at sea five days a week. During whale-watching season, I clocked hundreds of hours chasing humpbacks, countless pods of dolphins, killer whales hunting sea lions, and, I even made eye contact with a blue whale as big as our boat! After graduation, I went on a year-long surfing expedition throughout Mexico the Hawaiian Islands, and as far as Fiji. In fact, it was during a period of little wave activity in Fiji that the Australian couple who owned the resort where we were staying made me an offer that changed my life. In exchange for illustrating a brochure for their diving school, they would teach me to scuba dive. After obtaining my certificate, during my first real dive, I came face to face with a school of rather large reef sharks. As a surfer, I’d always been aware of their presence, but it wasn't until they casually swam past me within arm’s reach that I truly understood them. On my second-ever dive, I was taken to Namotu Reef. A place so beautiful and expansive with a panoply of fish so vast and colorful it defied belief. Moray eels snatched prey from little nooks in the coral shelf, an octopus instantly disappeared as it blended in with the coral. On that particular day, the visibility was at least 30 meters (close to 100 feet). Moments after emerging from a little cove, the brightness all around was dimmed by a sudden huge shadow cast across the seafloor. When I instinctively looked overhead, an enormous manta ray was effortlessly gliding through the water. As my instructor and I followed it with our eyes, it vanished from view as if it had never been there. It was this very experience that I sought to capture in what was to become "Manta Flight."