I am fully blaming my lack of communication (for well over a year now), on a wild combination of a bizarre turn of events, predominantly comprised of a Worldwide pandemic, subsequent lockdowns, homeschooling, easing of lockdowns, rush to get back to work, subsequent pandemic spikes, further lockdowns, more homeschooling, followed by not much happening apart from homeschooling (sorry did I mention that already!?), then too much happening (Year 1 & 4 arts and crafts, projects and topic work mostly!) followed by easing of lockdowns and religious holidays resulting in further pandemic spikes, lockdowns, a cessation of all work plans and to round it all off a return to homeschooling, double sided sticky tape, tinfoil, cotton balls and cut out cardboard projects once more!

 

Phew!!!!  At this moment in time I feel more qualified to audition for a presenter role on Blue Peter than I do for the a Director of Photography position for the next BBC David Attenborough wildlife documentary!

 

…….However let me back track just a little too before the COVID Pandemic Tsunami swamped the world as we know it.

 

The end of 2019 actually went really quite well as I was called upon to go and film Hollywood super star Will Smith (Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Bad Boys, Men In Black , A Pursuit of Happiness and a bunch more - Will Smith) on the Great Barrier Reef for a new nature documentary series.

 

A massive production of extremely high calibre film production with a bunch of people, tonnes of film equipment, boats, charter planes, the largest green turtle rookery on earth and a good number of big tiger sharks! My job was to film the underwater scenes of the coral reef, green turtles and yes the beautiful 4-5m long Tiger Sharks, along with Will Smith and other onscreen guests such as global explorer and conservationist "Mitty" or Cristina Mittermeier.

 

The shoot went well and at times I felt almost guilty as it felt more like an end of year holiday trip than hard work as I was surrounded by some good old friends as well as making great new ones. Our live aboard boat, the Aroona, was amazing with a great captain, fantastic crew and an even more amazing chef and oh yes every now and then I had to dive into the warm tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef to film turtles and sharks.

 

The trip lead up to and culminated in catching a 12foot tiger shark on a baited line and then reeling her in to the back of the boat to measure and fix a satellite radio collar to her dorsal fin. All action above the water was handled by our hero, Will Smith and local marine biologist, whilst I swam around under the water with the slightly aggrieved Tiger Shark and another marine biologist, oh! and did I not mention 3-5 other free swimming tiger sharks and about 10-15 reef sharks. Bu never fear I have my trusted safety diver with a broom stick in hand! Now in all my 24 years of scuba diving I have trained for but never experienced what is called a “Free Flow” situation. “Free Flow” results when the breathing valve of your scuba regulator mouth piece sticks open and the air freely and forcefully flows, under pressure unchecked, out of the regulator. Annoying and slightly concerning at the best of times but whilst swimming around with an angry 12 foot tiger shark (and others) and your onscreen talent which you have to film I realised I had little option but to carry on. I quickly checked to see how fast I was losing air from my tank gauge  and worked out I might have enough to continue with the filming dive and so stuffed the flowing regulator under my arm out of the way and grabbed my spare regulator mouth piece and breathed from that. Now there was the small matter of swimming and positioning myself into the underwater current to sweep my free flowing bubbles away from the shark and biologist I wanted to film, otherwise it would have looked like we were swimming around in a bath full of fizzing Alka-Seltzer or a whirlwind Jacuzzi. Anyhow long story short I managed to film all whilst keeping it bubble free and once the irate shark was finally released and we finished the dive I just had enough air left to swim back to the boat - no-one else had noticed a thing!

 

As I returned home after the shoot I flew through Sydney just as the wild fires raged around its outskirts, thick smoke clogged and cloaked the skies in the distance but everyone seemed unperturbed. There were also reports of some virus in china starting to become more mainstream. I managed to get back a few days before Christmas and celebrated the holidays and New Years as normal.

 

Come the first week off 2020 and although the news from Wuhan, China, was starting to get more serious the new year here in Malaysia kicked off as usual and we planned and completed our film shoots as normal, which with hindsight was very fortunate for us. I spent the beginning of February filming for the World Wide Fund for Nature and their Living Landscapes programme here in Borneo from which we had to make a multitude of educational films for them in several languages. With in a week of finishing up in the jungle I then flew over to Sri Lanka to film Blue whales underwater and from the air with my drone for a European production company who wanted to show the importance of whale poo to the whole ocean ecosystem. In a nutshell whales often feed in the ocean depths and then generally poo at the surface  resulting in the feeding of the often nutrient poor surface layers of the ocean with oodles of faecal fertiliser which subsequently feeds the basis of the whole ocean food chain - plankton. The plankton in turn is responsible for soaking up millions of tonnes of Carbon Dioxide from our overburdened earth’s atmosphere! So there I bet you didn’t know you are able to breathe easily due to whale poo did you!

 

Anyhow as we bobbed and boated about the Indian ocean waiting on and then following blue whales the COVID situation was becoming increasingly more serious and obviously more widespread than just in Wuhan. We successfully finished the shoot and headed home just in time before Malaysia decided to close its borders to international travellers and begin its first Movement Control Order (MCO) and lockdown whereby all residents were asked to stay at home for 4 weeks with only necessary trips to the shops for food allowed.

 

Schools were closed and Homeschooling began!!

 

To be continued………