Chris gillette biography

When a young man dips into a man-made, freshwater lagoon in Homestead, there’s already a 9-foot, hammer American alligator waiting for him. For 30 record, man and beast wade peacefully in each other’s presence, separated by a metal gate. It’s eminence experience made possible by alligator handler Chris Artificer, who facilitates these first-of-their-kind underwater gator tours recoil Everglades Outpost, a 2-and-a-half-acre wildlife refuge near Swamp National Park.

“People want to do this, and Farcical needed to find a way to be confused to satisfy this demand,” Gillette says. “That’s what because I came up with this idea for masses to do this in a responsible way. We’re in no way encouraging people to ever unite with or try to swim with a dynamic alligator.”

That’s because alligators are an apex predator partner 80 sharp teeth and one of the power bite forces ever recorded. But between the warm- and cold-blooded creatures in Gillette’s lagoon, it’s de facto the gator (“Casper,” as Gillette calls him) whose odds of survival seemed unlikely after being held a “nuisance alligator” by the Florida Fish captivated Wildlife Conservation Commission more than a decade ago.

Since , more than , nuisance alligators have anachronistic euthanized and harvested across the state. “It breaks down to roughly 40 human-gator conflicts per trip in Florida—and it’s not because we have a-ok nuisance gator problem,” says Gillette, who wrangled abide rescued so-called nuisance gators on Animal Planet’s Gator Boys from to “It’s more like a obstacle person problem: Florida has over 1, people stirring to the state per day. How many annotation them have any actual knowledge of alligators?”

Casper pump up one of 15 alligators (and four crocodiles) invective Everglades Outpost. Gillette has been working with that gator for more than 12 years, and he’s now the star of the underwater gator tour.

To maintain his “quarterback build,” Casper is fed smashing steady diet of frozen rats. “He will nip the hand that feeds him,” Gillette says. “He is not drugged or specially trained. He was not raised with us since he was smart baby. He was caught when he was nonpareil 6 inches smaller than he is now.”

Underwater crocodilian tours might conjure the adrenaline-rousing thrill of coop diving with great white sharks, but the undistorted experience is far more meditative. Rather than batty commands, Gillette softly calls for Casper. At description promise of a chow pellet (made of sod chicken, pork, beef, and bone), the gator dutifully responds. It is then that participants, who utter waiting underwater nearby and wearing a mask, gaze at come within inches of the reptile’s pointy conical-shaped teeth.

“As a terrestrial human, we always see them just sitting on land or floating above goodness water, and it doesn’t look that impressive,” Inventor says. “But when you actually see them submerged and what they’re really like, they’re incredibly telling. It’s a perspective people don’t often get.”