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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanOLDER POST:Open Ocean Dolphin Dive with George and AnnieNEWER POST:How High Can a Dolphin Jump?, Jumping DolphinsJul 1, 10 Comments Off
Good morning from Curacao, I went to bed at 7:00 last after spending all day at the Superior Producer. There is a film company here making a big promotional commercial about Curacao that will be broadcast in the States and Canada only. They got my name by calling the Dolphin Academy and asked if I was interested in doing all the underwater filming and of course I said yes! The first thing I told them was I have never shot video and only do photos but they assured me this would not be a problem. I met them at Ocean Encounters where they hired a private dive boat and by 9:00 we were on our way to the sunken ship called the Superior Producer. It was a beautiful morning and after an hour of teaching me how to use a Canon EOS 5D in video mode we were off. We had models in the water, a director who was constantly behind me looking over my shoulder and a support crew floating above. With an all around OK given in hand signals we all went under and I started filming but the camera had a problem and would not record, it was on but once we got below four meters it would stop recording and we all had to re-surface. I gave the camera to the support crew and he immediately tried it and it did the same thing, folks this is was a $3000 camera in a $4000 custom made housing that they rented in Miami can you imagine the frustration?? This happened over and over and we spent the next hour and a half back on board talking to people in the States and trying to Google this problem but no answer was found. Finally one of the technicians just pulled some buttons off from the inside and said lets try this so back in we jumped. I quickly tried it and it seemed to be working so again everyone geared up and jumped in and off we went. This time it seemed to be working, we first filmed two dives out in just blue water and then headed down 100 feet to the ship. Once on the ship the director stood behind me and with an OK our two models headed my way “acting like” they just discovered a sunken ship and we shot that scene three times! Our last shot was me high above the ship with the two divers exploring so I shot away and moments later we all “abandoned ship” as our time was up, remember this is a deep dive. So back on the ship the director is looking thru what I shot and finds out that the auto focus was not working on half the shots and says we have to go back and do it again! Well the boat we are on has to go back so the plan is now to come back and do a shore dive later in the afternoon. At 2:30 I met them again and they said “they took the housing apart and found all kinds of problems but now it’s working”. I said great lets go! The plan this time was a bit different, I was to go down and sit on the sand while the divers explored the ship. So down I went and rested on the sand at 110 feet with the ship right in front of me and moments later we were filming or at least I thought we were. I pressed the button to record and nothing happened and as I was trying to get the camera to work to giant Barracudas slowly passed right in front of the camera, I almost cried and wanted to kill this camera! I signaled to the director that it’s not working again and rose up off the sand and went to show him when all of a sudden it stated recording on it’s own!? I got everyone’s attention and said “Action” and again we were under way. To make a long story a bit shorter, the camera ended up only recorded a small amount of what was needed, it just wasn’t recording? So yep you guessed it we will probably have to do it again this week or next. I came home so tired from after being in the sun, on the water in a rocking boat, underwater, messing with dive gear and cameras, and being on two deep dives that I crashed super early last night! What a day!
Here’s a beautiful nurse shark from my dive to the Eastpoint a few weeks ago, I have been wanting to go back every day since. Nurse sharks are nocturnal animals, spending the day in large inactive groups of up to 40 individuals. Hidden under submerged ledges or in crevices within the reef, the nurse sharks seem to prefer specific resting sites and will return to them each day after the night’s hunting. By night, the sharks are largely solitary; they spend most of their time rifling through the bottom sediments in search of food. Their diet consists primarily of crustaceans, mollusks, tunicates, sea snakes, and other fish particularly stingrays.
I have such a busy day ahead, Aimee will be here tonight! Gotta go, Barry
OLDER POST:Open Ocean Dolphin Dive with George and AnnieNEWER POST:How High Can a Dolphin Jump?, Jumping DolphinsSITE MAP
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