Tamara Adame is a female cave diving instructor based in Tulum, Mexico.

Directed by Jan Balster the Vanilla Farm Documentary shares the story of two divers and how they became explorers.

“When the explorer is ready, the cave appears.”

That is what Jack and Tamara always believed: one day they would find a cave, and they would know exactly what to do with dozens of kilometers of virgin passage. In this film they share how they prepared to become explorers, and they walk us through an explorer's first great project. How do you know what to do?

The project is currently exploring funding opportunities, if you would like to talk about the film, please get in touch.

Photograpy assistant

Safety diver

Logistics and local contact

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/society/our-programs/blue-boundaries/

Honored to have been inducted by Jill Heinerth and Phil Short and to join an international pool of explorers.

Jack Cleary, original explorer of the system, and Tamara Adame, are both the principal explorers of this vast new cave system in Tulum, Mexico.

The exploration began in November 2024 and season 2025 is already planned.

With an average of 6m of depth and 5 connected cenotes, Sistema Vanilla Farm is a jewel in the middle of the jungle. Featuring white cave, highly decorated ceilings, stunning entrances, tons of wildlife and ancient bones as well as pottery, this is a truly beautiful and well deserved find for the team who has been walking the jungle and surveying other cave exploration projects since many years.

I was invited by Arielle Ginsberg, to push Sistema Paloma in Belize. Currently the longest surveyed cave system in the country.

I participated in Under The Jungle Science Week operating water flow monitoring devices directed by dr. Patricia Beddows. These dives were conducted on sidemount with the Kiss Sidewinder CCR.

Assisting dr. Jason Gulley and the Sunfish team during their mission to Prince of Wales island in Southeast Alaska, I conducted my first immersion into cold water diving. Boat and shore dives were conducted on Sidemount and CCR Kiss Sidewinder.

Read more.

I presented the Cave Corals project to UTJ Science Week participants.

This project was conducted in Open Circuit Sidemount configuration.

After having dived there a couple of times, I organized a team to go and resurvey the cave for future exploration opportunities.

This project was conducted with Sidemount and stages, using Mnemo and Ariane’s Line for survey.

Our first exploration in the state of Yucatan. The objective of this project was to scout five locations. One of them the old well of an abandoned hacienda.

The team conducted dives on the Kiss Sidewinder CCR using trimix.

I organized the resurvey and exploration of La Bendición, in Puerto Morelos, due to the depth of this exploration, Skanda Coffield-Feith and Jake Bulman took on the task while I remained in logistics, surface support, documentation and land owner relations. This project led to bigger out of state adventures.

I conducted the dives on Sidemount while the team used Kiss Sidewinder CCR and trimix.

This project was part of my practice in cave survey as I aspired to become an explorer. My first “long” dives of 4 and 5 hours took place during the resurvey of this cenote in Tulum. The pandemic lockdown allowed for numerous days of cave diving survey to be conducted and a large amount of information to be collected.

This project was conducted using Sidemount and survey using Mnemo and Ariane´s Line.

In 2020 I started designing a methodology that allows me to identify, document and measure coral fossils in the Mexican cenotes, with the idea of creating a catalogue of species thanks to macro photography.

During the global pandemic lockdown I took my first steps in cave survey and participated in multiple cave resurvey projects that contributed to further cave and cenote exploration in Quintana Roo and Yucatan.

Training under supervision of Skanda Coffield-Feith, I learned cave survey techniques and this was my first training project, conducted with him previous to the push that turned the project into a 15 thousand feet of surveyed passages.

Read more.

This six month University certificate in Diving Techniques for Scientific Research allowed me to expand my experience in monitoring fish, coral, sargassum, seagrass meadows, megafauna, water sampling, core sampling and anthropogenic impact on reefs.

I was hired by the National University to elaborate tools and outreach strategy for the coral reproduction project with dr. Anastazia Banaszak.

I was invited to be part of the biggest coral restoration project in the Maldives, planting five thousand fragments of coral from a mineral accretion nursery onto their new home on the reef.

Watch video.

I was part of the first local community brigade trained by The Nature Conservancy in Mexico, a network organized for the purpose of assessing reef damage after tropical hurricanes and restoring coral and reef structures on the Mesoamerican Reef Barrier.

Watch video.

Watch Mermaids Against Plastic, directed by Sylvia Johnson with a National Geographic film grant, this documentary talks about the role of the diving industry in mitigating the impact of single use plastics in the Ocean. Awarded 2020 Jackson Wild Changing Planet Short Form Award and 2020 Santa Fe Independent Film Festival Best Documentary Short & Best Overall New Mexico Short.

With a team of scientists on board of the Surveyor, spent two weeks obtaining samples of the Bravo Crater in Bikini Atoll to study radioactivity remains from nuclear tests. The research paper was published here.

This project was conducted using backmounted doubles, air and O2 for staged decompression.

I was trained in rapid reef assessment with the fish specialty, learning to identify, count, size and document the presence of fish on 30m transects. I then volunteered during the monitoring campaigns for the Annual Reef Report.

We conducted the first study on divers’ direct impact on reefs, conducting monitoring of dive groups and physical contact with reef structures during recreational dives. The study was published here.