Lying on the aluminum mesh floor, my video camera protruding from the small door as our shark cage skimmed over the kelp-covered reef, I finally reached an embarrassing conclusion. I was going to run low on air first and would have to be the one to call an end to this dive. I checked my pressure gauge again — almost time. I didn’t look up. Peter Kragh and Jeff Wildermuth were behind me shooting stills. Younger, fitter and capable of better air consumption, they would be forced to terminate the 55-foot dive while five great white sharks circled the cage, often passing through rocky canyons festooned in golden algae. It doesn’t get better than this, and I was going to be the guy to say “uncle.” I quickly turned my eye back to the viewfinder, capturing another scene as a 14-foot great white followed the drifting cage, the huge predator gliding over amber fronds and green sea grass. A few minutes passed before I checked my gauge again. OK, that’s it. I had to make the move. I had to admit it. “I ain’t as good as I once was …,” the song went off in my head. I pushed myself up and turned around.
Peter and Jeff were pressed against the side of the cage breathing from an emergency bailout tank strapped to the floor. Peter had a thin blue rope in his hand and was feverishly pulling it and pointing upward. Three pulls (or more, should you freak out and lose count) means “up.” Rodney Fox was on deck high above holding the rope, his sensitive fingers waiting impatiently for the signal. Peter looked at me and pointed up again while jerking a half dozen times on the rope. Uh oh.
The cage had been spinning on its suspension cable as strong winds blew the M/V Princess II back and forth across the cove at North Neptune Island. As the cage spun, the signal rope had wrapped itself a couple dozen times around the cable.
Normally, Rodney would not leave divers down more than 45 minutes. He would have made sure one of his experienced crew members was in the cage to prevent this sort of nonsense. But Rodney respected my crew and me as professional divers. He knew we were having a great dive. He knew we all had superior air-consumption skills. He knew we wouldn’t want to be brought up before we were ready. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I pushed myself off the floor and threw open the door at the top of the cage. I looked through the 50 feet of water between me and the Princess II‘s swim step. I couldn’t help but notice the five great white sharks separating me from the surface, safety and lunch.
The waters of South Australia are cold and often murky, but they hold wonders that rival the most spectacular inhabitants of the Coral Triangle. During the making of our IMAX 3D feature film, Under the Sea 3D, Michele Hall and I spent two weeks scouting the marine life of South Australia. We returned a year later for a four-week filming expedition in the temperate waters off Cape Catastrophe. Our goal was to capture 3D images of four of South Australia’s most iconic marine denizens. Certainly the most famous of these is the great white shark.
Great White Sharks
Shark diving arguably started in South Australia with diving legends Ron and Valerie Taylor and one of the world’s most famous shark-attack victims, Rodney Fox. After his 1963 attack, Rodney’s attitude toward sharks evolved from shark eradicator to shark conservationist. Today the Fox Shark Research Foundation helps fund shark research and lobbies the Australian government to promote shark conservation.
Rodney and his son, Andrew, use the 75-foot vessel Princess II primarily to run short liveaboard trips to North Neptune Island, 35 miles south of Port Lincoln, South Australia. They typically spend three to five days at the island, where their passengers view great whites from two cages suspended on the surface and a third cage lowered to the bottom. I wanted to capture the majesty of great whites in the highest resolution technically possible, IMAX 3D. I wanted to see the audience react to this awesome predator gliding through an IMAX 3D theater, seemingly within arm’s reach.
One particular shot I hoped to capture was a great white shark attacking a giant stingray. Andrew had seen this happen a few times while chaperoning shark divers to the bottom at North Neptune, and Rodney had told me great whites killed by fishermen are often found to have stingray barbs embedded in their faces. These rays can be 6 feet in diameter and carry a stinger more than 12 inches long. The battle between great white shark and giant ray would be an epic scene in IMAX 3D, so Peter and I spent hours on the bottom with the big camera trained on stingrays as we waited for great whites to pass over them. Twice we actually saw rays threaten sharks by raising their venomous tails, but we were never close enough for a shot, and we never saw an attack. Still, just witnessing the interaction between these massive predators was magnificent. But South Australia has much more to offer than great whites. In fact, I knew the other three subjects would probably have considerably more impact in the IMAX 3D format.
Giant Cuttlefish
After our scouting trip, Michele and I chose to run our filming expedition in May, specifically because that is when thousands of giant cuttlefish gather in the shallow waters of the Northern Spencer Gulf to mate, lay eggs and die. These are the world’s largest cuttlefish. Giant males reach nearly 3 feet in length.
Mark Norman, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading cephalopod experts, guided us to Black Point near Whyalla, South Australia. As the Princess II lowered her anchor, I was horrified to see the chain disappear into green murk 6 feet below the surface. The visibility was so poor we considered turning around and heading back south. But Mark said it could be clearer in shallow water, and despite this seeming contrary to logic I agreed to swim toward shore to have a look. We began seeing cuttlefish as soon as we encountered the reef, and they were most numerous where the water was about 12 feet deep. Amazingly, it was clearer inshore. During the few minutes we swam around looking at the site, visibility cleared noticeably. By late morning we had 15-foot visibility, and by the next day we had 33 feet or more. More significantly, giant cuttlefish were everywhere.
During the spawning season, giant cuttlefish lose all fear of predators. They seem to know they have reached the end of their life cycle, and their instinct for self-preservation all but disappears. The cephalopods’ sole priority becomes mating and laying eggs. Imminent death is inevitable. Filming the dramatic displays of giant males competing for females is spectacular and incredibly easy, which is nice when trying to work gracefully in shallow water with a camera the size of a refrigerator.
Mark explained that giant cuttlefish reproduction has an interesting twist. Male cuttlefish live as long as two years. The two-year-old males return to Whyalla as aggressive, highly territorial giants. They compete for females with other giant males and will fight with those who try to invade their harems, producing elaborate displays of color and pattern. But many younger, year-old males also come to the Northern Spencer Gulf. They, too, have a successful mating strategy. Instead of challenging the giant males for access to females, the smaller males disguise themselves as females. These cross-dressing males then slip past the giants and mate with females, often unnoticed.
Leafy Sea Dragons
After spending several days filming the giant cuttlefish, we moved the Princess II back down the Spencer Gulf and up into Wool Bay in Gulf St. Vincent. The lush forests of algae near the Wool Bay jetty are home to leafy sea dragons. Carey Harmer, who has logged thousands of hours studying and photographing sea dragons, joined us for this portion of the expedition. We would have been helpless without him: Leafy sea dragons are so well camouflaged you can literally stare at one from inches away and not see it. Carey’s trained eye was indispensable. Still, the sea dragon’s amazing camouflage caused me considerable frustration and cost IMAX Corporation and Warner Bros. many thousands of dollars in film.
One of the most important shots I intended to capture for our film was a slow tracking shot that moved through the kelp to reveal a sea dragon. I felt this would be a spectacular way to demonstrate the animal’s amazing camouflage. Carey would show me a sea dragon (I was hopeless at finding them myself), and then I would back off 20 feet, take the massive IMAX 3D camera from Peter and begin to move it toward the creature. I did my best to fix the location of the dragon in the kelp 20 feet away, but at that distance I couldn’t actually see it. Once I began to move forward, I would switch the camera on and creep in to reveal the dragon. The problem was that I repeatedly failed to find the dragon in the viewfinder when I moved close enough to reveal it. Heck, I couldn’t see the dragon when not looking through the finder. Running a pair of 1,000-foot, 70mm rolls of film through the camera at a cost of nearly $60 per second, I botched shot after shot. Finally, after spending a truckload of Warner Bros. money, I ended my 10th attempt with the dragon suddenly materializing in the viewfinder. It turned out to be one of the most amazing shots in the film. In the theater the kelp drifts past the audience, and then a red dot appears to hover within arm’s reach of the viewer, surrounded by golden fronds of algae. Suddenly it becomes apparent that the dot is the red eye of a creature so well camouflaged it is all but invisible. The shot became the climax of our film.
Australian Sea Lions
We made a third stop at Hopkins Island before moving south to film great white sharks. In the shallow kelp gardens of Hopkins Island, we found the charismatic Australian sea lion. These may be the most beautiful sea lions in the world. Unlike the dark brown California sea lions that seem to soak up light like a cosmic black hole, Australian sea lions are blond and beautifully reflective. Their light color makes them much easier to capture on film than their darker cousins. But even more important is their rather temperate character. They like to settle on the bottom nestled within their kaleidoscopic algae garden and just stare at the camera. This was especially endearing when we were filming the animals with the IMAX 3D rig. The sea lions loved to look at their reflections in the large, flat housing port. Many times this left them at a perfect distance for capturing their images in 3D (about 3 feet). But often they would plaster their noses against their reflection in the Plexiglas, leaving their image hopelessly out of focus. If Peter or I shooed them away, they would immediately return to entertain themselves by chewing on our video monitor cables or pulling on our rebreather hoses. A short distance away, Michele captured the action with her still camera — when sea lions weren’t trying to swim off with her strobe. These are wonderful problems to have after a lifetime struggling to get close enough to capture images of wild creatures.
Andrew and Rodney like to take people to Hopkins Island to swim with the sea lions on the first day of great white shark trips before he takes them to see the sharks. Rodney says that after seeing the giant predators (which often make meals of Australian sea lions), divers are sometimes less enthusiastic about swimming in open water surrounded by white-shark cuisine, however beautiful the sea lions may be.
It may seem surprising, but in IMAX 3D, sea dragons, giant cuttlefish and even Australian sea lions make better subjects than great whites. What really works in the giant-screen, 3D format are subjects that hover for extended periods, seemingly within arm’s reach of the viewer. For the IMAX 3D camera, that ideal focus distance is between 3 and 3.5 feet away. Great whites will come close, but they don’t stay in this magical zone long enough to produce a really satisfying 3D experience. But what underwater film is complete without at least one shark encounter? What trip to South Australia would be complete without interacting with this iconic apex predator? Besides the obvious photo opportunities great whites present, the time we spent with them was probably the most fun we had while making our film.
Peter dropped the bailout regulator and pushed himself up through the door at the top of the cage. He also looked up at the five great whites and 50 feet of water separating us from the swim step on the stern of the Princess II. We both realized it would be a very long swim, exacerbated by the fact that none of us were wearing fins. The thought of sculling our way up through the sharks gave me a short dyspeptic sensation in the pit of my stomach. Fortunately, there were two bailout tanks in the cage and enough gas to last all three of us at least another hour. However superior Rodney might think our air-consumption skills, he wouldn’t leave us down there for more than two hours. But I didn’t think it was going to come to that.
The blue signal rope was tied to the top of the cage. I pulled out my knife and cut it free. Then Jeff kept watch as Peter and I passed the rope back and forth between us, unwrapping it from around the support cable. We each had to slip back down to the bottom of the cage for a few drags from the bailout gas or when a shark passed uncomfortably close, but soon the line was free and Rodney could feel three tugs on the line (and a few more for good measure). We made it back to the surface with a good story to tell and easily in time for lunch.
A year after our scouting trip and our little misadventure in the shark cage, Michele, Peter, Jeff and I, along with the rest of our film crew, returned to South Australia with the big IMAX 3D camera and enjoyed an enormously successful shoot. Diving with the sharks and other animals of South Australia was so much fun that two years after Under the Sea 3D was released, Michele and I, along with a group of good friends, chartered the Princess II for another three-week trip to retrace the path of our film expedition — this just for fun and our own private image libraries. South Australia is one of those special places of great adventure that always beckons my return.
© Alert Diver — Q2 Spring 2012