Shark Tracker: Confessions of an Underwater Cameraman

Acknowledgements

Introduction

When I was seven years old I caught my first glimpse of the Great Barrier Reef. My Uncle Terry helped me fit my snorkel and mask and I ducked my head under the water and saw a field of staghorn coral stretching away into the distance. Some electric blue fish swam near me, and I was captivated. So began my love affair with the ocean and everything in it.

In the early 1980s when other kids were riding their bikes around Rockhampton, I was heading out to the reef to collect fish with my best mates Dhugal Lindsay and Bevan Slattery. We’d bring the fish home and add them to the aquariums we’d designed and built ourselves. When I wasn’t in the ocean I was reading about it and watching documentaries at every opportunity.

In our teens, we’d take regular trips to the Keppel Islands and camp out on North West Island. We always brought specimens home for our tanks and, as you’d expect, the more dangerous the animal, the more fascinated we were. I even took an epaulette shark to school for a talk once. I carried it in an esky full of saltwater and my mother had to promptly take it home and put it back in the aquarium.

She and my father probably thought it was a phase we kids were going through, but we never really grew out of it: I’ve spent the last twenty-something years working as a marine biologist and cinematographer, Dhugal has gone on to become a professor of marine biology in Japan, and Bevan, now a respected IT entre-preneur, is my business partner at Biopixel.

My family moved to Adelaide when I was in my senior years in high school, and I earned my open water scuba certificate from the Glenelg Scuba Centre at the age of sixteen. Before the year was through, I had my first major dive accident. I ran out of air at depth and surfaced too quickly, leading to decompression sickness. After two treatments of more than six hours each in the hyperbaric chamber, I made a full recovery. It opened my eyes to how dangerous diving could be, but it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the ocean.

I was determined to turn this passion into a career, so after I finished high school in 1988 I moved to Townsville to study a bachelor of science in marine biology at James Cook University. I picked up part-time work at the Great Barrier Reef Aquarium, working in both the education and curatorial sections, and it was there that I first grew interested in cinematography — though back then it was just ‘making videos’. The aquarium had thousands of slides and pictures of marine animals to use in educational talks, but these never quite captured the most interesting part of the story: animal behaviour.

We were at the beginning of the video revolution and I was convinced video was the best way — the only way — to really show people what these animals got up to. With so few video clips available, I did the only logical thing: I bought my first video camera and started filming clips myself. And the aquarium visitors loved them. I had quite the collection by the time I graduated in 1992.

My first professional job was as a marine biologist and education officer at Oceanworld Manly (now Manly Sea Life Sanctuary) under the guidance of curator Ian Gordon. There I continued making videos of marine animal behaviour and shooting clips for popular TV shows like Totally Wild. It was my dream job — Ian and I even helped design the aquarium for the Maui Ocean Centre in Hawaii for Oceanworld’s parent company, Coral World International.

But the icing on the cake was meeting Ron and Valerie Taylor, the cinematographic force behind many of the ocean documentaries and feature films I’d watched as a kid, including their productions Shark Hunter (1963), Blue Water, White Death (1971), the series Barrier Reef (1971) and, of course, the live sequences in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1974). Ron and Val had met through their shared love of spearfishing, but Ron also had a contagious interest in underwater photography, using acrylic housings of his own construction to protect his cameras. Val caught the bug and they began to build a successful career together, capturing action sequences of dangerous sea creatures.

Working with them through Oceanworld Manly was a treat. They shared their knowledge with me during several expeditions to South Australia, but that was just the beginning. I’ve gone on to spend countless hours with them, filming in spectacular locations, and I will always consider them to be both professional mentors and personal friends. They’re probably also responsible for a really bad habit I developed during that period — buying more and more camera gear, and usually more expensive gear!

After several years, I returned to Townsville to work as a consultant for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and created a series of marine biology training videos and manuals for the tourism industry. It was there that I met my first business partner, Brett Shorthouse, with whom I formed the production company Digital Dimensions.

In our thirteen years of operation, I shot and produced over fifty films. The work took me around the world — to the Amazon, the Red Sea, the South Pacific, Indonesia and other Asian countries, and all over Australia. I earned an international reputation for underwater cinematography and won many awards, including an Emmy for ‘Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Cinematography — Nature’ in 2011.

But the real satisfaction for me was filming and producing with some of the greats of natural history, like David Attenborough and Mike deGruy. Being both a shark biologist and a talented cameraman, Mike was my ultimate hero and role model. I still consider his documentary Sharks on Their Best Behaviour to be the best shark film ever made – I wore out two VHS copies. I consider myself fortunate to have worked with him on the Discovery Channel’s Mysteries of the Shark Coast (2008). It was one of my favourite Digital Dimensions productions, and one of Mike’s last, before his tragic death in a helicopter accident in 2012.

Digital Dimensions wound up in 2012, shortly after we shot and directed the BBC/Discovery and Channel 9 series Great Barrier Reef.

Bevan Slattery and I formed Biopixel in 2013, based at James Cook University in Cairns. Together with Dr Jamie Seymour from the uni, I run one of the largest dedicated marine life film studios in the world, with its own large reef and mangrove systems and numerous aquarium systems. Every day I get to mix my scientific and cinematographic expertise to produce vision of highly complex animal behaviours, many never seen before. In a way, I’m back where I started, playing with specimens in my aquarium. But I’ve come a long way, and I’m headed somewhere totally new.

In recent years, I’ve contributed a significant amount of vision to David Attenborough’s Great Barrier Reef series, and the immediate future holds several 3D IMAX films. Biopixel uses the latest ultra-high-definition cameras and drones to capture things that haven’t been possible before.

I like to think I’ve lived a hybrid life. I’m part scientist, part filmmaker. I actively contribute to shark research, publishing many papers on reef sharks and tiger sharks, and I’m heavily involved in filming and contributing my time to the Raine Island recovery project, coordinated through the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. This is one of the few good news stories coming out of the Great Barrier Reef at the moment — we are actively managing sand movement and other protective measures to help increase the hatching success rate of green sea turtles.

I’ve even developed a cruelty-free shark-catching device I call the claw.

My two interests combine in a symbiotic relationship: by pairing the two, I’ve been able to reduce the prohibitive expenses of sea-time for researchers, and the research output creates more interesting stories for our documentaries, which then creates more demand for both. It’s a fairly unique model and I’m proud to be making it work.

Biopixel has now set up its own foundation to support ongoing shark research activities and I’m excited by the prospect of future filming and research adventures on Bevan’s new expedition vessel, the Intrepid Explorer, which will begin operations in late 2016. Ultimately, I hope my images help build awareness of the pressures facing the marine world and encourage people to get involved in the conservation of the Great Barrier Reef.

This last twenty years has been hugely rewarding, but it hasn’t ever been easy. I spend over half the year away from home and it’s been a strain on relationships with family, friends and even business colleagues. My marriage survived less than two years.

My whole life has been dedicated to learning about the secret lives of sharks and other marine animals and, like any career, mine has had its highlights and lowlights along the way. Though I’ve probably had a few more accidents and near misses than most, and you’ll find a number of them here.

Bruce, the baby great white

‘M ate, we have a great white shark!’

I had been working at Oceanworld for a few months when I was awoken early one morning by an excited phone call from the curator, Ian Gordon. Some of the crew had gone out fishing for seven gill sharks that were needed for the aquarium, and had been using long lines to fish the deep waters off Sydney’s North Head. To make sure the sharks were healthy, the lines were checked every half hour or so. The crew had been out for a few hours with no bites at all, then just after sunrise they pulled in a line and up from the depths came a shark. But they soon realised it was not a seven gill shark, but a baby great white shark. It was about 1.3 metres in length — the perfect size to be placed in the main shark tank at Oceanworld. And, as it had only been on the line for a short time, it was under minimal stress.

Ian and I had a quick discussion about the best way to deal with it. Cruising back with it inside the specially built shark transport container from outside the Heads was going to take well over an hour to get to the aquarium at Manly. We worried that this was going to take too long. So instead we decided to bring the shark to Shelly Beach, on the ocean side of Manly, where we would have a truck ready with another specialist shark transport unit to take the shark quickly to the aquarium on the harbour side.

I was to assemble the crew and take the truck to meet Ian and the boat at Shelly Beach. It just so happened that day my car was not working and I was staying a couple of kilometres from the aquarium, so I quickly had breakfast and started running. A couple of staff members passed me in their cars on the way, but none of them stopped to pick me up. Finally I arrived at the aquarium and, breathless from the run, I assembled everyone and told them we had a very special shark on its way. We quickly put the shark transport unit together and onto the back of a work truck and got the oxygen bottles ready. It was only a five-minute journey from the aquarium to Shelly Beach. We parked on the boat ramp and waited for the Oceanworld boat to arrive. Everyone was really excited. One unusual piece of kit that we’d been asked to bring was a surf ski. So we took this off the truck and put it in the water. By this time it was about 7.30 in the morning. It was a beautiful bright day and the beach was full of people jogging and swimming. Little did they know that one of the ocean’s most feared predators was about to arrive.

Finally we saw Ian slowly making his way around the corner of North Head and towards the beach. He was travelling slowly to minimise any shock from the bouncing boat to the shark in the shark transport unit.

Ian motored the boat towards the boat ramp and I jumped on the surf ski and paddled out to meet him. All the guys on the boat reckoned the shark was in great condition. It still had the hook in its mouth, connected to the long leader of the long line. We attached the end of the leader to the back of the surf ski and the guys in the boat used a harness to gently remove the great white from the transport container and ease it into the water. The idea now was for me to paddle the surf ski around until the shark started to revive. The leader was about 8 metres long. So here I was, out in Shelly Beach paddling the surf ski with a great white shark 8 metres behind me. I paddled gently and slowly so I was not driving the shark but rather allowing it to recover and start swimming of its own accord. I was simply directing it which way to go. The shark stayed on the surface the whole time with its dorsal fin breaking the water. As I started to paddle closer to shore, people on the beach started yelling at me, ‘Shark! Shark!’

‘Yes, I know it’s a shark,’ I yelled back.

By this time we’d attracted a lot of attention and people kept coming down to the water’s edge to see what was happening. I made my way back towards the boat ramp where the rest of the crew were waiting for me. By this time the boys had taken the boat back to the aquarium: at high speed the journey would only take twenty minutes. The idea was for me to keep paddling with the great white shark behind me for at least twenty minutes to give it a good chance of recovery before stressing it again in the short truck ride to the aquarium.

When it was time to put the shark in the transport container, the team simply slung another harness underneath it, and then lifted it out of the water and placed it in the shark transport unit. The shark transport unit in this case was simply a large tub of seawater into which we injected oxygen at an extremely high rate. Once the shark was settled in, we made the five-minute drive from the ocean side of Manly to the aquarium on the harbour side. When we got there, the rest of the boat crew were ready and waiting. The aquarium at Manly has a unique feature: a sealock that allows sharks to be swum in from the harbour outside into a holding area before they are released into the main tank. Ian and the guys had the sealock doors open and the guys were already in their wetsuits in the water waiting for us. Again using a sling to take the shark out of the holding tank, we quickly ran the length of the jetty and down the stairs and put the shark into the water. The shark was still in the sling as the guys swam it over from the jetty to the lock and into the holding facility. The rest of us ran down to the diving area and quickly donned our wetsuits and dive equipment in preparation for the shark going into the main tank. Once we were in all our equipment, we jumped into the holding tank where Ian and his team had already removed the hook from the shark’s mouth.

In all the commotion this was the first chance I really had to have a look at this amazing shark. It was a baby boy, only about 1.3 metres long. At this point in history only a handful of great white sharks had been trialled in captivity in aquariums around the world. No one had successfully kept one for any length of time. The main problem with the great whites caught previously was the length of time between their capture and subsequent release into the aquarium facility. Most had been caught long distances from the aquariums and the transportation times had been many hours, even up to half a day. In fact, most of these sharks had been captured accidentally by fishermen, who had then contacted the various aquariums. So far we had had the shortest transportation time of any great white to date.

The other thing we had going for us was the fact that this was a small specimen. If anyone was ever going to have a chance of successfully keeping a great white shark in captivity, this was it. This was a holy grail of public aquariums. In addition, the main shark tank at Oceanworld was perfect for pelagic predators. It was in the shape of a giant doughnut, and the tunnel