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I met Zuccarini years ago on the dock at Stuart Cove’s Dive
Bahamas, where he was preparing to shoot a commercial that
involved mermaids and sharks. I was there on an editorial project
for a dive magazine, and we shared a boat that day. It was my first
insight into the complexities and underwater choreography required
for such a shoot. We have crossed paths on other projects since
then, including a massive promotional production for the Bahamas’
Atlantis Paradise Island resort with director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour
and X-Men movies). I was there to shoot the underwater stills, and
Zuccarini was responsible for the underwater video. We came full
circle again this August, coincidentally meeting on the dock at Stuart
Cove’s as Zuccarini wrapped a major feature film that involved shark
footage. When you consider the hundreds of millions of people who
see his work projected on big screens, he is no doubt among the
most visible and influential shooters of the underwater world.
When he was a child in Key Biscayne, Fla., the beach was his
playground. His earliest memories are of walking along the water’s edge
and shaking small creatures out of the sargassum that washed ashore.
That quickly evolved into a passion for snorkeling, and he began to hunt
lobster and to fish at a very early age. But what resonated most with
the young Zuccarini was his father’s great passion for photography and,
especially, filmmaking. By the time he was 11 he had his own Pentax
K1000 camera, and by 12 he was a certified scuba diver.
Zuccarini also had access to his father’s sophisticated Super 8mm
movie cameras to shoot slow-motion and reverse-sequence shots. He
and his brother filmed each other in simulated hurricanes, which they
created using an oscillating fan and a garden hose. Bristol’s Camera on
Key Biscayne became his fantasy world, and he would wander through
the store dreaming of owning the Nikonos cameras and SLR housings
on display there. But the humble Pentax was his first underwater tool.
Protected in an Ikelite housing and lit with a Substrobe M, it was
always with him as he patrolled the worm-rock reef in the shallows
near his home, capturing tropical reef animals on film.
As a teenager in Miami he found many opportunities to interact
with the sea, and like many other invincible youths, Zuccarini took
chances. He and his buddies told their parents they were going
to camp overnight on nearby Elliott Key, but they all piled into a
17-
foot Boston Whaler to cross the Gulf Stream and live on Gun
Cay just south of Bimini in the Bahamas. There on the uninhabited
sand spit, they camped and fished and threw the fish carcasses into
the water to watch sharks eagerly devour the remains.
He bought a 14-foot bass boat with a 25-horsepower Evinrude
engine; he named the boat “Shark Bait” and almost became just that
one time when he was buzzed by a massive hammerhead. Its enormous
dorsal fin rose well above his diminutive gunwale; the event was an early
“
You’re gonna need a bigger boat” moment for him. He saw Jaws when
he was only 9, and even then he knew sharks don’t really act like the
one in the movie. But on that day with that hammerhead, Zuccarini was
paralyzed by fear and filled with profound respect.
Opposite: Zuccarini filmed this giant anaconda for an Animal
Planet production about creatures of the Amazon. Anacondas can
weigh more than 200 pounds, and reports exist of much larger
snakes. They are fast swimmers and formidable aquatic predators.
Above, from top: In the Bollywood action-thriller Blue, the beautiful
waters of the Bahamas were the setting for romance and intrigue.
The Ray of Hope, sunk by Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas off New
Providence, has served as the underwater set for several of
Zuccarini’s film projects.
pete zuccarini
Bringing the Blue to the Big Screen
W
henever I watch a movie
with underwater scenes in
it, I always stay to the very
end to watch the credits
roll. There are only a hand-
ful of underwater cinematographers who might
have been responsible for the footage, and on an
impressively long list of feature films (including
all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Life of Pi,
Into the Blue, Act of Valor, Dolphin Tale, Piranha,
Jumper, The Motorcycle Diaries, the upcoming The
Lone Ranger and more) one name appears again
and again as director of photography or cameraman
for the underwater unit: Pete Zuccarini.
b y S t e p h e n F r i n k
TIM CALVER
TIM CALVER