Filmmaker's Journal: when mother nature says no, you can't film here

This past weekend, my dive buddy, still photographer Bidd Riker, and I tried once again to dive on the wreck of the "ACE" off the coast of San Clemente, California. I say tried once again, because this was to be our 4th attempt at trying to reach the ship. Three previous attempts were met with poor visibility to the extant that it made for unsafe dive conditions. We were past the "third time is the charm" mental attitude and were now bordering on the "we better find this bloody #@!!% thing" philosophy.

The "ACE" is a 58-foot fishing boat - a drum seiner, to be exact - that sank in the fall of 2006 during rough seas with a full load of sardines and mackerel. With a measure of air trapped in its holds, the ACE drifted a bit across San Clemente's sandy bottom before finally settling down on its port (left) side at a depth of 114 feet. That drifting made it hard to locate for officials and salvagers, and so it remained out of sight until a year ago when a local dive boat charter set about to find the ACE based on rumors and speculation provided by local fishermen.

On this fourth attempt, Budd and I once again found visibility to be very poor at around 5-foot - not dangerous diving but certainly not what you're hoping for when shooting video and hoping to capture images that show the size and overall condition of the wreck. The ship is nearly covered from bow to stern with white metridium anemones which are startling for their bright white color against the backdrop of rusting steel and dark water. In addition, the ship is littered with sculpin, a type of scorpionfish, that prefer resting on the bottom quietly waiting for small fish to pass by and inadvertently become today's meal.

Wrecks of just about any size are fascinating subjects to film. Their appeal works on several different levels: they are something out of place (its supposed to be floating on the surface, not resting here in the murky depths); man-made objects are a testament to our folly either to the ravages of war, as with the South Pacific wrecks from World War II, or to underestimating the power of nature; and they can be marvelous artificial reefs that attract a wide variety of marine life.

However, on this occasion, there were to be no sweeping panoramic shots of the ACE - not when you can only see a few feet in front of your face. And that points out one of the challenges faced by nature photographers and filmmakers. You may have phenomenal skills and all the equipment in the world at your disposal, but you are still a slave to the devilish whims of mother nature. Many times, the footage you see on television or in the theater, or the images you see in books, are the result of many, many repeated attempts. And the more unusual the subject matter, whether it be a particular animal or a certain animal behavior (or simply a capsized fishing boat), the more challenging it can become to find just the right conditions that will enable you to get what you had hoped for.

But when the dice roll in your favor, you can come away with some startling imagery. And this can raise another issue: are we doing the oceans a favor when we show it in all of its visual glory, when we show the best of the best of our photographs of video? Or are we presenting the general populace with a false impression of the actual health of the oceans? When I have had the opportunity to speak with renown underwater photographer David Doubilet, he often asks this same question. Can we effectively talk about, say, fragile coral reefs that are in decline when every book on the subject is full of glorious and stunning images of vibrant fish and reef communities? One would hope that the viewing audience would appreciate the diversity and color of underwater life as seen in photographs and film and, by extension, want to preserve it. But it's a thought that gnaws away in the back of the minds of some of the great craftsmen who so beautifully chronicle the world's marine ecosystems.

For Budd and me, such heady questions needed no pondering this weekend. Skunked again by mother nature and its millions of sand particles, plankton, and animal larvae that can make for a thick soup of poor visibility, we decided we would try again in the fall when changing temperatures and currents can make for a few more days of acceptable conditions.

Of course, we're bound to hear how great it was the very next day. "Oh, you should have been there. . ." Shoulda, coulda, woulda - words to live by for the underwater filmmaker.

Filmmaker's Journal: when things go wrong, take it in stride

Saturday was to be an interesting day: diving on a newly found 100-foot wreck off of San Clemente, CA and then filming a brief introduction to a video I was preparing for a film festival/science conference. A busy day but a very satisfying one. At least that was the plan.

Wildlife filmmaking is infused with a high degree of serendipity - unusual animal encounters, shots of once-in-a-lifetime behaviors - along with an often equal measure of frustration when things don't quite go your way. You control only that which you can control, and the rest you just take as it comes.

My dive buddy, photographer Budd Riker, and I had heard about a newly discovered wreck several miles offshore from Southern California's San Clemente beach and we were looking forward to this first of what could be many dives. Ocean wrecks have always fascinated me. As a man-made structure, they seem eerily out of place underwater and yet they also can prove to be an attraction for a wide range of sealife, from schooling fish to algae, corals, and numerous small critters that take up residence in the iron and wood oasis.

But first you have to find it. The boat operators had marked the location with a buoy (which makes for an easy method to descend straight to the wreck, but today the buoy marker was no where to be seen. Lost in rough water or cut free by a grumpy lobster fisherman who felt his unspoken lobster trap territory was being encroached upon; whatever the cause, the crew's easy reference point was now gone and hopes for relocating it on the sandy bottom via sonar proved to be ineffective. Rock outcroppings provided tantalizing but ultimately disappointing sonar wild goose chases.

With time running out, the boat captain had to eventually abort all hopes of locating the wreck. He moved the boat to another site with kelp beds and rocky reefs to offer some sort of consolation prize for having missed out on diving the wreck. However, that turned out to be a disappointment too, as visibility could easily be seen from the surface as having the consistency of green-tinted cafe mocha. With that, all diving was scrubbed and the boat and its disappointed and embarrassed crew headed back to the harbor.

Well, at least I didn't have to spend part of my afternoon cleaning camera and dive gear.

On to plan B in the day's schedule: to shoot the video introduction. Budd and I scouted for a suitable location at Dana Point Harbor and found an interesting spot with rocks, trees, and ocean breakwater in the background. Well, at least I will be able to salvage something from my day, I thought. Oh, but I will have to wait a moment as this one recreational powerboat motors by; its throaty engine rumblings being picked up by the microphone.

Good. All clear. Oops, hold on; here's another one. Now a helicopter cruises over head. And another boat. Now I'm having people who are strolling along the harbor's edge, enjoying the day's great weather, stop and call out, "Hey, you guys making a movie?" Well, not at the moment, that's for sure.

Working in uncontrolled environments can often be very challenging when you have specific goals or objectives to meet. The yin-yang attitude of mother nature is not always conducive to specific agendas. But it's those occasional monkey wrenches that can and do make it interesting.

Fortunately, Budd and I are scheduled to return to the offshore wreck in two weeks, after the dive operator promised to have it once again marked by buoys and accurate GPS coordinates. And we got the introduction filmed the next morning in a different and, thankfully, quieter location - just minutes before rain, forecasted for the evening, decided to come early.

Hah. you missed me, mother nature. At least for the time being.