An Interview for Global Warming 101

Sharks

Here's a quick video to give you an Idea what it's like filming and shooting on Cocos Island. When you're lucky that is.

Preperation

A new generation of explorers has been invited to sit around the same table that has been Will Steger’s base of operations for over twenty years. The biggest difference between the planning of our expedition and those before us is the road that allowed our easy access to Wills cabin, far removed from the town of Ely Minnesota which itself is far removed from the city life that has become all to present in my life. It used to be that to get to wills cabin, skiing, dogsledding, or canoeing across the lakes was the only way in, and this is exactly how Will brought in the supplies to build his cabin.
Few buildings sidetrack my gaze as I scan the shoreline along Wills lake. Steam rises from the lake and a stairway descends almost directly into the water from Wills sauna. After letting the sauna wring the sweat from us, the cold water is as inviting as a tropical beach and for hours we trade off between hot and cold..
We are here because Will has chosen each of us to join his latest expedition. We are from around the world, and we all have different takes on life, but we come together for a single task. Through the Circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island in the high arctic, we will be bringing back first hand accounts detailing the effects of global warming. My job is to capture the many critical moments on camera and to bring home the imagery that will inspire people to take action.

Gili Air

It seemed more like a vacation, a month in Indonesia shooting surfing is nothing to complain about. I left the US again, but this time took a few extra weeks to just do some freelance work before the surfing shoot started. I found a small Island called Gili Air just off of North Western Lombok and took a transport out to the Island. With no motorized vehicles on the Island, I walked the extent of it over the three days that I was there. The Circumference was dotted with the occasional restaurant or hotel, (an expensive one being $5Us) But the interior was tranquil and untouched as the few tourists who visit never venture far from the turquoise waters and the local dive shop. Once beyond site of the beach, paths disappeared, and plots of land with little thatch huts started to pop up under the coconut trees. The people here work mostly as coconut farmers and are happy with their quiet lives. Soon I was to return to the dollar soaked tourist town of Kuta, Bali, and when in need of an escape, I only needed to imagine I was once again on Gili Air.

Bali Surfing

The colors are brighter, as they usually are in a dream. The water is bluer, and the horizon is rippling with steadily marching clones of the perfect wave. Through the ethereal water that moves more like a fog than an ocean, the corral is stretching toward my feet, and tiny jewel fish take refuge in the shade below my surfboard. In the dream, I’m riding a fluorescent green board, and wave after wave wraps around me, carrying me all the way to a beach covered in seashells and coral. It’s a dream that I struggle to keep myself from waking from. It’s the inevitable grumble of my fully awake stomach that finally rattles me out of bed.

I walk the quarter mile to the beach and check the swell with a fresh cup of coffee. The swell has risen, and although not the ribbed ocean from my dreams, waves twice my hight stretch to the distant horizon. Nobody is out, and I grab my board and run down the beach to the most manageable peak. With a quick stretch to wake up my muscles, I slip into the water, letting the rip tide drag me beyond the peaks quickly.

My first wave comes, and I turn to face the shore. Less than halfway into the wave, I get thrown in front, into the teeth of the ocean, where water gnaws away at a retreating shoreline. Thrown over myself again and again, I watch the light change directions around me, and try to keep track of which way is up. By the time it’s done, I am standing somewhere between where the sand is churned up in the wave and where it makes up the solid floor of the ocean, and this time, I’m not in the rip-tide, so the paddle out takes twice as long.

Again and again, I’m thrown into the churning white-water, and it seems impossible to get my board into the wave before it pitches over. Demoralized I head for the beach and with my head down, I walk back to my hotel to rinse of the salt and the memories.

That afternoon, I walk through Kuta, and stop into one of the back alley surf shops where other travelers have sold their boards desperate for cash or just demoralized like I was. There, sandwiched between a pair of old beat up boards, a sliver of fluorescent green catches my eye. Curiosity couldn’t possibly describe what I felt, but that is the closest word I can think of. I pull it off the shelf, and right there in front of me is the board from my dream. Hardly a pressure ding in it’s smooth glassy surface. And it’s cheap.

Before I know it, I’m standing up on a set wave, gliding over the coral and under the waves pitching teeth, caressed by the ocean. The colors are brighter, as they usually are in a dream. The water is bluer and the coral waves at me as I surf by, and in the half-speed world that comes around during these moments, the water moves more like a fog than an ocean.

An afternoon in Singapore

Greenish storm clouds roll off of the frothing ocean and collide with the Decrepit buildings of Singapore’s red light district. The sun as strong as it is, only just filters through the clouds enough to give an eerie glow to the buildings.

Shark Attack

I´m on Cocos Island photographing sharks and shark poachers for my project that I´m working on with National Geographic, and on my last night on the Island, after a full day of diving with massive schools of sharks, we decide to do a night dive and hopefully catch one of the more impressive congregations of sharks, a feeding frenzy. There is a pretty reliable group of perhaps 200 white tip reef sharks, each between 5 to 7 feet long that come into the particular bay that we were diving in every night.

After about 45 minutes of taking photographs of these sharks searching every crevice in the reef for fish, I began to get a little to comfortable... I allowed myself to descend into the school which stuck pretty close to the bottom, and was mostly left alone except for one of the bigger sharks that rushed me, and was successfully discouraged when it ran into my big metal camera housing.

Perhaps 20 minutes later, just as we were about to resurface, I was alone on the bottom perhaps 50 feet underwater, behind me a huge boulder hid the sharks from my view and I hoped me from them. The sharks swarmed around the boulder, and I was instantly in the midst of hundreds of sharks! One of the larger ones, obviously a leader in the pack came up from behind and latched onto my foot from the side, and began to thrash about. I put a good kick into it´s nose a couple of times and it finally released me and took off, seeing it run must have discouraged the other sharks, because they all turned and swam a safe distance away, I dashed up about 15 feet to get above the school, and then looked down to assess the damage done to my foot. I count myself extremely lucky, because the fin was torn not an inch from my flesh, and the thick rubber together with a neoprene boot had stopped the sharks teeth from penetrating too deep, and left me unscathed. This seemed the perfect time to end the dive!

Bright Moon over Cocos

It will be a few days until the full moon, but the way the light shimmers on the sea makes the area light up. I´m getting dropped off in Waffer Bay on Cocos Island, and the captain of the boat doesn't want to risk coming close too shore. The water is shallow, only ten feet or so with reefs coming up almost to the surface, but it´s that way for about a quarter mile. So as they lower my gear overboard and onto a kayak, I look into the crystal clear water and wonder what lies below. As if on cue, the unmistakable silouette of a shark passes under the boat, perhaps 7 feet long, but it could be deeper, and bigger. Wafer bay is full sharks using the cover of night to hunt. It´s one of those places you don´t swim past dusk. Soon however, I´m halfway to shore, approaching the shallows, where the water is only 5 feet deep. The waves are beginning to break, and as I paddle to ride a swell to shore, the familiar shape slides alongside the boat, and surfs along side the kayak only a few feet away, ducking away just as the wave finally breaks on the rocky shore.

Sea Sick

Even the hardened sailors got sick on this passage. 36 hours of traveling against the swell, with the boat constantly crashing into the next wave, then gaining speed and rising only to crash again. Inside, where you can´t see the windswept ocean, it looks like the walls themselves are dizzy, rocking back and forth trying to find balance.
I finally have arrived on Cocos Island, and am greeted by a rising sun. The Island is lush, and overgrown. More so that I remember. I don´t believe in omens, but i need one, so I take it as a sign that this trip will finally end my search for the perfect image to go along with my project. Setting foot on the sea soaked sand, my body sways back and forth, as if the island is being rocked back and forth by the swells crashing against the limestone walls that make up the coast. I know it´s just me though, and I stumble to my bunk to sleep off the Dramamine...