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FALL 2012
FROM THE SAFETY STOP
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P U B L I S H E R ’ S N O T E
R
ecently I had back-to-back great white shark
adventures, one virtual and one real. For the first
I sat at home and marveled at the high-definition
encounters broadcast on my plasma screen
during Discovery’s Shark Week marathon. For the second I
actually boarded a boat in Ensenada, Mexico, and ventured
out on a 22-hour steam to Guadalupe Island. Once we
arrived we set chum bags in place, and I dropped into a
submersible cage. There at 30 feet, I experienced the rather
laborious challenge of getting a great white shark close
enough to effectively photograph.
The action in a shark cage, unlike the action on a TV
screen, typically happens at a sedate pace. Long intervals of
staring into the featureless blue are punctuated by interludes
of high adrenaline once a shark becomes secure enough in its
surroundings to eventually make a run for the bait. Such runs
allow the “decisive moment” Shark Week photographers live
for: a chance to deliver a bite-shot with a unique point of view.
This year, as producers struggled for ways to elevate shark
imaging beyond what has been seen many times before, the
sharks were photographed from miniature blimps in the air
with dozens of GoPro cameras in synch. It’s hard to believe
great white sharks have reached such a level of exposure that
capturing them in new and different ways matters so much.
Not so long ago, capturing one of these predators on film at all
was a high achievement.
My first attempts at white-shark photography were dismal
failures. I’d already missed the glory years of white sharks in
South Australia; in the 1970s groups of well-heeled tourists
went to the South Neptune Islands to experience the
first “accessible” photo-ops of great whites. Those
were expensive trips even by today’s standards, and
by the time I had the resources to go to that part of
the world the fishing pressure from “glory” anglers
had greatly diminished the populations. I remember
my first trip there: Despite days of around-the-clock
chumming, only one feeble and pathetic white shark
showed up to feed. She had been horribly disfigured
by entanglement in a longline. Although she escaped
that death, her jaw was broken, and there were deep gashes in
her flesh from the monofilament. I almost didn’t want to take
her picture as she came in for the bait, knowing she needed
the food more than I needed the photograph.
On my next trip to South Australia I got totally skunked.
We saw no sharks at all in the seven days we were out.
Someone was on the stern platform 24/7, ladling all manner
A Virtual Reality Check
T E X T A N D P H O T O S b y S T E P H E N F r i N k