Latest news with #Willy
Chicago Tribune
30-07-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Around the Southland: Moraine Valley health career boot camp, donation benefits forest preserves, more
Moraine Valley Community College and Northwestern Medicine Palos Hospital paired up to present a free health careers boot camp, introducing high school students to medical careers. Nearly 50 students from Argo, Sandburg, Stagg, Evergreen Park, Oak Lawn, Lincoln-Way, Mother McAuley, Reavis, Shepard and Eisenhower high schools participated, hearing presentations by Moraine Valley faculty and joining hands-on activities such as how to stop bleeding, packing a wound, using a military tourniquet and how to use personal protective equipment. Including health-related options, Moraine Valley offers more than 140 degree and certificate programs and noncredit classes. Registering students can attend the school's Super Saturday registration event, 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 9 in Building B on the main campus, 9000 College Parkway, Palos Hills. A list of classes is at New students must complete an admission application. To learn more, call 708-974-2110. The Nature Foundation of Will County has given $59,525 to the Forest Preserve District of Will County, supporting the district's habitat restoration, community engagement and nature education efforts. The money will be used for such things as a redesigned Willy's Wilderness website for kids that launched this summer, teacher appreciation events like yoga, as well as prescribed burns, volunteer supplies, the Smithsonian Pollinator Exhibit and Pollinator Party at Isle a la Cache Museum. A foundation partnership with Cabela's Outdoor Fund and Bass Pro Shops supports the forest district's fishing derby season and the Be a Trailblazer digital scavenger hunt. 'Our donors, partners and sponsors support programs that protect nature, inspire discovery and bring people and nature together,' Tara Neff, the foundation's executive director, shared in a news release. 'Our well-being is inseparable from the health of our environment.' The Village of Flossmoor hosts its annual National Night Out & Touch a Truck free event from 5 to 8 p.m. Aug. 5 in the parking lot at Village Hall, 2800 Flossmoor Road. Attendees can explore vehicles from the Police, Fire and Public Works departments, as well as talk with representatives from those departments. Tours of the police station will be given, and the Fire Department will give a fire sprinkler demonstration. A bounce house, games and face painting will be available to kids, and everyone can join the water balloon toss. A new option this year is free back-to-school immunizations and vaccinations for the public given by the Cook County Department of Public Health from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the Board Room at Village Hall. Walk-ins are welcome, and no registration or insurance is required. A parent or guardian must accompany children. Information is at The 22nd annual Taste of Orland Park presented by Northwestern Medicine returns from 5 to 11 p.m. Aug. 1, 3 to 11 p.m. Aug. 2 and 3 to 9 p.m. Aug. 3 at Village Center, 14700 S. Ravinia Ave. Parking, activities and admission are free, and food and beverages will be available. An ATM will be at the site. Attendees can sample signature dishes, drinks and desserts found at booths throughout the center from more than a dozen area restaurants. Two stages feature live entertainment, including a variety of bands as well as a battle of the bands contest on Aug. 1, live band karaoke and a 'Family Feud' game on Aug.; 2 and 'Orland Park's Got Talent' on Aug. 3. Kids' activities are offered all three days. Parking is at the Orland Township lot, 14807 S. Ravinia; Orland Park Public Library, 14921 S. Ravinia Ave.; Red Lobster's west lot, 14750 S. LaGrand Road; and garage at 9650 W. 143rd St. Ravinia will be closed between 147th and 149th streets. Rules and a full schedule are at or 708-403-5000. The Palos Park Police Department has planned a series of events to mark National Night Out Week. Residents can stop by the department, 8999 123rd St., at 7 p.m. Aug. 1 to have coffee with Police Chief Joe Miller for updates about the department and to ask questions. The Police Department and Palos Fire District host Touch a Truck from 3 to 4 p.m. Aug. 5 at the Village Green. Coffee With a Cop is set for 11 a.m. Aug. 6 at Plush Horse, 12301 S. 86th Ave. Scam awareness sessions with officers Bob Kotsianis and Scott Van Wagner are set for 2 and 6:30 p.m. Aug. 5 at the Kapture Center, 8999 W. 123rd St. They are designed to heighten awareness of scams and financial exploitation of older adults and provide tips on personal and home safety. Pike House Fest, a chance to enjoy art demonstrations, food, cocktails and live music, takes place noon to 4 p.m. Aug. 3 at the historic home, 1826 W. 91st St. in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood. It's hosted by the Beverly Arts Alliance, and admission is $20 per person or $25 per family. An online silent auction of experiences, objects and art can be previewed at Money raised will go to the Eugene S. Pike House Foundation to rehabilitate the home as a cultural center. Information is at This year's Jean Derting memorial Scholarship, $2,000, has gone to Indian Springs School District 109 graduate Ceceilia Beradoni. She is a 2021 graduate of Wilkins Junior High School in Justice and will attend Fordham University as part of her quest to become a doctor. The scholarship, now worth $2,000, has been given out since 1971. Smith Village's Party of the Porch features music by the cover band JD and The Tunes at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 7 on 112th Place between Western and Oakley avenues. It's open to all Smith Village residents, their friends and families and neighbors. No reservations are required. Participants are encouraged to pack a cooler with snacks and drinks and bring a chair or blanket to sit on. Fat Tommy's will sell hot dogs, and beer and wine will be sold. Visit
The National
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Willy Maley's poetry reaffirms humanity's protean potential
WILLY Maley retired from the University of Glasgow in 2024. For over a quarter of a century I worked with him, at times quite closely, co-supervising research students or teaching in the same courses. He is internationally known as a scholar of Renaissance and Modern literature and a symposium on his retirement gathered a company of brilliant scholars all united in their respect and – more remarkable – their great liking for Willy as a colleague, scholar, teacher and friend. His loyalty to his subject, his students, his profession and colleagues was a constant lodestar quality. When these new books of his poetry came to my attention, I was immediately delighted and well-disposed to like them. More than that: I was curious to know what his poetry would be like in terms of subjects, techniques, skills and language. As an academic, your knowledge of the great poets and writers might – perhaps should – act as a caution when you try your own hand. As Hugh MacDiarmid puts it, 'Wha hear a Burns or Shakespeare sing, / Yet still their ain bit jingles string, / As they were worth the fashioning?' So it's a delight to report how good these books are, what a replenishment of positivity they bring, what qualities they endorse and enhance, what strengths they convey, so deeply. She Wakes Me Up and Other Poems (Edinburgh: Main Point Books) is a collection of love poems dedicated to the poet's wife, Dini. It's difficult to quote from the poems in She Wakes Me Up simply because each one is a singular coherent statement in itself, lyrical or anecdotal, gestural or meditative. Supplied Short extracts might show up as fragments, extracts, incomplete – which they would be – or else they might appear uxorious. That's a word a reviewer once used of a love poem of my own. It means, 'inordinately in love with one's wife'. It wasn't intended as praise but that's what I took from it, so, running the risk, here's 'Sound Mind' in its entirety: Sucked in by the sound they make, I strain to hear the words you say hear them like they're being sung through throat, through lips, through teeth and tongue, a voice that has your body in it: warm, earthy, tender, true, it has in it my childhood streets, the taste of all my favourite sweets. The poems note and record 'moves, changes, / years of exile, loss' and all the vicissitudes of almost missing each other, but then there is finding the connection, and 'The Click': 'that jolt when the juice kicks in / between two strokes of the clock' or 'when something becomes / 'suddenly clear and understandable' / like when two people turn out to 'become friends / or be compatible from the outset''. It's something that has been 'lost in time, but there all along'. Time is the key and the enemy at once. It unlocks the moment and its prospect opens out but it's always coming towards us. Therefore the poems balance love in the moment of discovery with the longer presence of its pleasure and enactment. READ MORE: The Scottish poets whose lines feature on our bank notes But then, what makes it possible to value it at all is an awareness of its mortal limit, a limit that looms larger for some than others. The poems in this collection are carefully judged neither to exaggerate the personal, biographical or autobiographical story, nor to sentimentalise uniqueness. They recognise the cyclical, regenerative power love confirms. And they connect that physical, visceral experience with the reading that we all do, one way or another. 'Book For Life' begins: 'I dream that we are working on a book, / or editing, since others play their part' and ends: 'you look at me just as the penny drops. / It's better if the writing never stops.' And 'Future Perfect' plays gently yet profoundly with time, love and lastingness: Every time we say goodbye We say hello again That's our fortune and our trouble. We live between two times In memory and in the moment As in the old days of cinema When you left halfway through Saying this is where I came in One day, the poem wishfully concludes, the future will have become 'The perfect place / for our wishes to come true / And they did, and they do'. In contrast to these personal, delicate poems, there is also a poised discursive application of James Joyce short story 'The Dead' to personal circumstance. Supplied Scrap Mettle Collection (Glasgow: Seahorse Publications) is a much more varied collection of poems: tributes to a father, a grandfather, reflections on being a stepfather, portraits and praise-poems, observations of people in contemporary society at large, poems about Glasgow and Glasgow's people, meditative perceptions, and sharp explosive squibs of observation, like 'Bookface': I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by social media barking hysterical half-baked dragging themselves through twitter feeds at dawn looking for an angry fib. This goes with 'Twitteronomy', a torrential cascade of a poem listing the negative things a certain form of 'social media' technology enables, to the belittlement of humanity. But if these are outward-facing poems, justified condemnations of one of our society's failings, they also display an understanding of human susceptibility to the temptations of easy self-indulgence. And there are other poems where compassion for humanity carries its power through understatement. 'Covers' deftly evokes the comfort, reassurance and strength that can be given across the generations: If we came home like drowned kittens daddy shook our coats out on the landing. Last night I dreamt I came in soaked to the skin and he said it's okay son, just hang your jacket on top of mine, which was wet through and suddenly I knew I wasn't scared of dying. And there are poems of public pronouncement, including 'Shoeshine on Leith', a splendid short flyting in serious attack mode, revoking the status of Edinburgh as Scotland's 'capital city': 'You curtsey and bow with your overgrown fringe / And a forelock that serves as a cultural cringe / Turning tricks for the tourists with a painted-on smile / You're Scotland with Shortbread, not Scotland with Style.' It goes on: Tattooed and adorned with Westminster largesse you said a loud No when you should have said Yes while proud Glaswegians and Dundonians Sneered at the courtesans, pimps and Etonians Whose favour you curry, you wee Scottie dug that does a few tricks then soils his own rug. It concludes: 'By taking the path of least resistance / You've voted yourself out of existence.' In the long aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum, or should I say in the long interregnum between 2014 and Scotland's coming independence, that's a poem that every honest Member of the Scottish Parliament should know by heart. Why did [[Edinburgh]] fail us so badly? What made the people of Glasgow and Dundee so justified in voting Yes? The answers are complex but finally decisive and they challenge the status quo with an absolute demand that this poem encapsulates precisely. READ MORE: Hugh MacDiarmid's work is the kind of poetry we want Some are referential poems, showing clearly how popular cultural idioms and texts win their way into deep moral meanings and forceful understanding, as in 'Let's Go Get Angel', which delivers a universal human sense of commitment, purpose and value picking up from a line in Sam Peckinpah's astonishing 1969 film, The Wild Bunch. The kind of commitment, courage and humility shown in both film and poem connects with another short poem, intensely personal, publicly stated, becoming universal, 'Love and Death': as in love so in death better to leave than be left better be gone than bereft. Throughout both collections there is humanity and empathy, even in the more angry poems. In 'The Crow's Stone' (the title punning on the exclamation, 'Stone the crows!' – you can work that one out for yourself), the poet tries to help a desperate crow trying to lift a stone with its beak, only to find a millipede beneath it, looking up at him and seeming to say, 'How could you?' Meanwhile, 'Twists and Turns' (a football poem in praise of Tommy Burns, 'the Celtic number 10') is fast, witty and infectiously good-humoured, rippling with fun. In February and March 2023, I wrote a series of articles in The National about a collection Willy edited called Our Fathers Fought Franco (Luath Press). It consisted of accounts by fathers and relatives of volunteers for the International Brigades fighting Franco and fascism in the Spanish Civil War, including Willy's father. In the first of these I wrote: 'In an era when politics and media seem designed to desensitise people and make us feel cynical about what's most essential, this book is an antidote. Reading it reminds you of the lasting value of care, the common sense of passion, the balance of what's right and must be fought for in this world, and what's wrong, and needs to be opposed.' The words apply as closely to these two books of poems. I had a few questions for Willy. How did he come to write them? What was that relationship between work as a poet and work as an academic and scholar and professional teacher, a professor of literature? Alan Riach: Willy, we've known each other as colleagues for more than 20 years but I hadn't read your work as a poet before now. It's such a refreshing renewal of commitment. I can see where the range of reference and the depth of conviction come from, and how they work in poems that are immediate and accessible and yet also packed with emotional investment. Did you come to them fast or were they building up over a long time? Willy Maley: I came to the poems fast but they emerged as a potential collection over a long period of time, arising from particular events or emotions or conversations. They were initially private communications and reflections never intended for publication. I was always pressed for time, painted to the walls, so it was a case, not of emotion recollected in tranquility, but of emotion experienced in the heat of the moment. I did go back through them, editing and selecting, once the decision was made to do something with these scattered verses. Alan: The love poems are very moving partly because of the skill with which the lover addressed is so evidently given a life in the poems outwith the imagination and apprehension of the poet. They're never merely projections. Is that self-conscious craft, or intuitive character? Willy: My lover, wife, muse, addressee is a writer and archivist and artist and diarist in her own right and not as institutionalised or tongue-tied by convention as I had become over the years, so it was never a question of writing as a poet to a mute muse but writing as one lesser writer to a better one. Alan: The poems in Scrap Mettle Collection are concerned with characters, family, friends, histories of commitment, often struggle, sometimes loss. Sometimes they condemn things that should be condemned. And yet they avoid exceptionalism or egoism. Would you wish them read as tributes, acknowledgements of the achievements of other lives lived, endorsements of specific beliefs? Willy: I never liked the idea of heroism or used the word, despite the fact that my father was a very ordinary everyday hero in his own way, as was my mother, as are so many working-class men and women. So those poems in Scrap Mettle Collection are tributes, homages, acknowledgements of the small acts of courage or resilience that I admire. My father, for example, was profoundly unsentimental. I'm not but I live in the shadow of that aversion to anything mawkish, even if I still fail to uphold the dry-eyed tradition! Alan: If there's a mortal sense of loneliness in these poems, in both books, there's equally a recognition of what being human entails, both solitude and the opportunity for solidarity, mortality and a certain knowledge of what continues, goes on living in the carrying stream. If I've got this right, does this bring into alignment and reinforce the reciprocal worlds of the academy and poetry, the scholar and the poet? They're different worlds, perhaps, but surely they're not opposed, and in these books overlapping in the best of ways? READ MORE: The connections between Scotland and India Willy: The two books were once one, but as it became clear over time that these were distinct poems on love and politics, a decision was made to separate them, and the love poems were gathered together under the heading of Late Life Love, a very particular experience distinct from first love or midlife love. The title She Wakes Me Up was chosen by the publisher Jennie Renton and captured the inspiring nature of the addressee. She wakes me up in every way. Those are private poems made public. None were previously published as poems. The ones now in Scrap Mettle Collection were always public, and some were published. They are occasional verses too, like the love poems. The scholarship or criticism that's always there in the background for an academic definitely played through those poems. The solitary sensibility was never mine. I'm one of nine children and I've always put family, community and class ahead of self. Teaching also plays its part in eradicating any notion of the loneliness of the long-distance researcher or solitary scholar. I taught creative writing for years as a critic and mentor, not as a writer. These late life collections, post-terminal diagnosis collections, have been made possible by retirement. If I was still working, I doubt they'd see the light of day. Being pressed for time made them, and now it's made them public. She Wakes Me Up will be launched at Waterstones, Byres Road, Glasgow, Thursday, July 24 at 7pm. Please email or call to secure a place: glasgowbyresrd@ 0141 357 4759. All welcome, entry free. Scrap Mettle Collection will be launched at Avant Garde, King Street Glasgow, 7pm, Tuesday, August 26. Book available from Willy Maley was diagnosed with terminal cancer in July 2023. His blog posts, including his brilliantly courageous, meticulous and encouraging accounts of living with cancer, can be found at: There, he writes this: 'In August a wee girl fell in the pond in our local park unseen by anyone else, and as I waded in to rescue her I had a fleeting thought: maybe I've been spared to do this one thing. The butterfly effect.' It's a heartening episode, and undeniable. These books only expand upon the sense that there are miracles of serendipity, possibilities that we have been given to live up to. The butterfly effect is everywhere. Wole Soyinka, the African Nobel laureate, wrote in a book entitled Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse and Dissonance in African Art Traditions (2019): 'The primary objective of art is to constantly reinvent itself, its own modes of expression and representation. The objective of art is also to be chameleonic and protean – that is, to change shape and colour at will, to supersede both reality and expectations. Yes, indeed, the goal of transformation is not only desirable, it is an integrated element of what art does.' Soyinka's words are apt to remember when we read Willy Maley's poems. They are reinventions, reaffirmations of humanity's protean potential, revelations of openness to all that's best in our marvellously chameleonic capacity to 'supersede both reality and expectations' – and to be transformative.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Spanish court approves extradition of Ecuadorean tied to TV station attack
MADRID/GUAYAQUIL (Reuters) -Spain's High Court on Tuesday authorized the extradition of William Jofre Alcivar Bautista, accused of leading a violent attack on an Ecuadorean TV station in early 2024, provided that Ecuador guarantees his safety in custody. Alcivar, known as Commander Willy and alleged head of the criminal group Los Tiguerones, was arrested in Spain alongside his brother Alex in October 2024. Ecuadorean authorities accuse the pair of orchestrating car bombings, contract killings, extortion and a live on-air raid of TC Television's studio in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city - part of a wave of violence that led President Daniel Noboa to declare a war on gangs, which he branded as terrorist groups. The court rejected arguments against Alcivar's extradition but insisted on additional assurances from Ecuador, due to concerns over violence in its prison system. His brother's extradition had been approved earlier under similar conditions. The Ecuadorean government will not rest until all fugitives have been captured, Interior Minister John Reimberg told local radio in Guayaquil on Tuesday, adding that gang leaders are fleeing the country out of fear of arrest. "They leave with the fear that we will get them, so we are working with different governments where we have some located, like what happened with Willy in Spain, and other similar cases," Reimberg said. The raid on the TV station unfolded live for about 20 minutes, as 13 masked and heavily armed men stormed the studio, forcing staff to the floor. Police eventually rescued the hostages and the attackers surrendered.
Straits Times
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Spanish court approves extradition of Ecuadorean tied to TV station attack
FILE PHOTO: A view of the building of Ecuador's TC Television station after gunmen stormed into a studio during a live TV broadcast, in Guayaquil, Ecuador January 10, 2024. REUTERS/Vicente Gaibor del Pino/ File Photo MADRID/GUAYAQUIL - Spain's High Court on Tuesday authorized the extradition of William Jofre Alcivar Bautista, accused of leading a violent attack on an Ecuadorean TV station in early 2024, provided that Ecuador guarantees his safety in custody. Alcivar, known as Commander Willy and alleged head of the criminal group Los Tiguerones, was arrested in Spain alongside his brother Alex in October 2024. Ecuadorean authorities accuse the pair of orchestrating car bombings, contract killings, extortion and a live on-air raid of TC Television's studio in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city - part of a wave of violence that led President Daniel Noboa to declare a war on gangs, which he branded as terrorist groups. The court rejected arguments against Alcivar's extradition but insisted on additional assurances from Ecuador, due to concerns over violence in its prison system. His brother's extradition had been approved earlier under similar conditions. The Ecuadorean government will not rest until all fugitives have been captured, Interior Minister John Reimberg told local radio in Guayaquil on Tuesday, adding that gang leaders are fleeing the country out of fear of arrest. "They leave with the fear that we will get them, so we are working with different governments where we have some located, like what happened with Willy in Spain, and other similar cases," Reimberg said. The raid on the TV station unfolded live for about 20 minutes, as 13 masked and heavily armed men stormed the studio, forcing staff to the floor. Police eventually rescued the hostages and the attackers surrendered. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
The Guardian
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Manta man: film profiles unlikely bond between diver and giant sea creature
Located about 500km off the southern coast of Baja California lies a group of ancient volcanic islands known as the Revillagigedo Archipelago. Home to large pelagic species including whale sharks and scalloped hammerheads, the rugged volcanic peaks were also once the site of an unlikely friendship. It began in December 1988 when Terry Kennedy, a now 83-year-old American sailor with a storied past, met a six-meter-wide giant Pacific manta ray off San Benedicto island's rugged shore. He would go on to name him Willy. 'When I saw him beside the boat, as massive as he was, I just had to get in the water just to see him,' says Kennedy. 'I threw a tank on and jumped over, but I didn't see him anywhere. He couldn't have vanished that quick. And then I looked straight down and he was coming up underneath me. He was about four feet away and rising so I had no way to get off his back.' Together, on that day and over the next decades, the two rode through the water, with Willy taking Kennedy around the underwater volcanic peaks and as far as two miles, only to always return Kennedy to his boat. Now, 37-years on, their unlikely friendship will be explored in a new documentary called The Last Dive, released on Sunday ahead a series of limited screenings in the US and New Zealand. In it, Kennedy embarks on a final journey to the island in the hope of reuniting with the ray. With its focus on a relationship between man and beast, it will undoubtedly draw parallels to Netflix's 2020 documentary The Octopus Teacher, which told the moving story of how Craig Foster came to know an octopus. Film-maker Cody Sheehy hopes that showing the film will 'inspire a whole new generation' to fall in love with the ocean. 'For me, it's personal,' he says. 'I live with my wife and two-year-old son on a sailboat. Every night, I drift off to sleep with the sound of the ocean slapping our hull. Over the last 20-plus years, I have watched life in the ocean disappear.' When Kennedy and Willy met, very few divers understood the harmful impacts that could come with touching a wild animal – a practice that has been banned globally across federally protected marine areas and dive sites. Harmful impacts from physical touch include significant stress and behavioral changes across mantas. Yet, at the time, Willy, with his four distinctive black dots in the shape of a diamond on his right shoulder, and Kennedy, formed an inexplicable bond of trust and respect that Kennedy documented with his video camera. Coming up to Kennedy's boat and slapping his fin against the hull, Willy would wait for Kennedy to climb on his back before taking off for a ride around the island. On multiple occasions, Willy helped Kennedy locate abandoned nets. 'He drove me crazy one day trying to get my attention,' says Kennedy. 'Finally, I moved off from the other two divers, got on his back, and he took me off and we run on down. Next thing I knew, I see the bottom coming up, and there's this giant net, far bigger than anything I've ever seen before. 'I realized early on, he took me to the full perimeter of the net. He was purposely showing me what was there, how big it was,' Kennedy says. He went on to contact the Mexican navy and in two days, Kennedy, alongside a large gunship and navy divers, pulled up 17,050 meters of net. Another time, Willy positioned himself between Kennedy and a great hammerhead shark during one of Kennedy's dives. 'He turned around and came up in front of me and was kind of dogging me, back and forth. I thought he wanted to go for a ride but I'd break to the right, he'd break to the right. I couldn't understand what was going on with him. Finally I did a jig and jog and I looked around and there was an 18ft great hammer,' Kennedy says in The Last Dive. 'I thought to myself, 'Whoa. Willy protected me,'' he adds. With the largest brain-to-body-mass ratio compared with other fish, mantas are highly intelligent creatures. As curious filter feeders, mantas can recognize themselves in a mirror, demonstrating a rare sign of self-awareness comparable only to a few animals including primates, elephants and dolphins. Yet these docile creatures are listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act, with thousands being targeted and killed each year for the trade in their delicate feeding gills or merely caught as bycatch across legal and illegal fisheries. Kennedy's friendship with Willy changed not only his approach to wildlife underwater but also pushed Kennedy, then a big game fish hunter, into his unlikely role of conservationist. In 1994, Kennedy captured on camera the slaughter of multiple mantas on Valentine's Day at San Benedicto island – including ones that swam with Kennedy the day before. After the incident, which prompted international outcry, Kennedy became a vocal proponent of federal fishing regulations, successfully pushing the Mexican government to declare Revillagigedo Archipelago a nationally protected marine reserve. 'What happened out in San Benedicto, I just pretty much said, 'That's enough for me.' I'd rather shoot them with a camera and from that day forward, I got along with the big fish that would actually come close to me. I don't know what it is when they no longer felt any fear of me,' he says. Kennedy's relationship with the ocean has evolved over the years. The self-confessed 'troubled kid' growing up in California started diving at 12 years old – his first dive being a 200ft dive on his own. He served in the US navy in Vietnam and later was a Hells Angel biker, a bar owner and a wild sailor living onboard his boat – once named Erotica – on the Pacific. But as his relationship with the rays deepened, he found he was his truest self under the water. For Kennedy, who has done more than 14,000 dives: 'My world starts when I go below the surface.' Since meeting Willy, that world has become one he and his ocean collaborators are dedicated to preserving. Amid a global decline in mantas and rise in poorly regulated dive boats leaving them frequently injured and their fragile ecosystems disturbed, the need to protect mantas is more urgent than ever. 'There are so many dive boats out there that if we don't dive responsibly with them, it might affect how they [the rays] feed underwater,' says Sheehy. Sheehy, who dived with Kennedy in the archipelago, also points to boat traffic, saying: 'The mantas want to come up to the top, they're hard to see and they're getting hit by boats. And I think that is the real pressure that tourism is bringing that we need to talk about.' The urgency for increased marine regulations also comes as Donald Trump's administration sets a dangerous example to other countries to disregard environmental protections. The US's latest environmental rollbacks from commercial fishing proclamations to delisting certain animals as endangered species threaten the overall wellbeing of marine wildlife. Though rare, the bond between Kennedy and Willy offers a profound glimpse at a shared bond that is possible when such creatures are given the chance to live and thrive. 'Willy showed me what needed to be done, and I've just done it,' Kennedy says.
