The ups and downs in the life of a Shark Photographer

My apologies; for the last week Elasmodiver has been offline. Really it should be Webserve Canada that is apologizing but given their track record that is unlikely which is why Elasmodiver has moved servers. Re-uploading hundreds of pages and thousands of pictures is a slow process hence the interuption. Everything should be back to normal soon except at Webserve Canada who just lost another client. Was that enough of a negative plug for Webserve Canada? You get the point :)
Ok, onto something sharky:
A few days ago I got some bad news. I had been tentatively invited to pilot a submersible for a film shoot at Guadalupe Island for a few weeks but the project ran into a snag and had to be delayed indefinitely. That was a blow. It would have been awesome to spend day after day under water at the best place in the world to see Great White Sharks. Who knows what new behaviors we would have witnessed. At least the shoot is still a future possibility.
Then I got some great news; a shark diving buddy of mine - Nathan Meadows, is joining my project to build a deep water camera system: Project Deep Shark. Specifically, Nathan has offered the use of his machine shop to help with the construction of the housings. I'm very happy to have his help because it will make a huge difference to the construction time. Perhaps more importantly, Nathan is bringing his usual enthusiasm which is contagious and may have an even more profound effect on how quickly the project takes shape. I met Nathan a few years back (shark diving of course) and then I bumped into him again this summer when he joined the Shark Diver Magazine trip that I hosted in eastern Canada. He also wrote an article in the last issue of SDM and I have a feeling that (like the rest of us) he will become more and more fanatical about sharks as the years go by. Nathan's wife Lindsay is also a big shark fan and with that kind of support you can achieve anything. And once sharks have a grip on you there is no escape.
In other news, it looks like it will be even longer before we will finally head south. The refit of the ship that I am working on in British Columbia has had a number of setbacks. Nothing too serious just time consuming. So, our new ETD from Canada is December 6th. I believe that we will actually make this departure date unless something catastrophic happens between now and then. But it means that we will not be in sunny Baja until late December. Fortunately the mobula ray migration which we want to document, is at its height in January, so we should still have plenty of time to shoot after we get to Cabo. Its getting really cold here now and the nights are drawing in, but hey, maybe we can get some skiing in before we go! There is always a bright side.
Last night I was walking along the shore winding down after a busy day at the boat yard. Some kind of fox (or maybe it was a coyote) was scavenging at the waters edge. It was lit up by the moon and I got a great chance to enjoy it before it finally became too nervous of my attention and trotted off into the bush. It got me thinking about how isolated we are from nature. I can't remember the last time I saw anything that big foraging so close to the city. With so little contact with the natural world around us its not surprising that it is so hard to generate support for conservation for our local fauna. And if even that is a struggle what chance do sharks have?
Its been a while since I got on my soap box and I'll spare you the whole story this time but remember the key points and tell as many people as you can:
Sharks are in decline. They are heavily over fished and can't bread fast enough to bounce back. Even if you don't like sharks we need them. Because of their low birth rate, sharks are the only animals that can maintain a healthy balance in our oceans. Without them the food chain will collapse with catastrophic consequences.
Spread the word, boycott restaurants that sell shark fin soup, join conservation groups like The Shark Trust and Sea Shepherd, and try to dispel the myth that sharks are mindless killers. Its a tough message to get across to people but its very important to keep trying.
For the sharks,
Andy Murch

Summer of the Sharks - The Movie

Two summers ago I left on a road trip with Eli (the Editor of Shark Diver Magazine), Rafa Flores (rancher, shark diving fan, driver and part time videographer) and Rusty Armstrong (Film Editor, topside Camera wielder and eventually Director). The plan was to document a typical summer season for us on the road chasing sharks. It began with a three week road trip in Rafa's RV followed by a series of flights that took us to both coasts of the US with side trips to Mexico and the Caribbean. The trip was a great adventure for all of us. Rusty (fresh out of film school) got his first chance to put a full length feature together, Eli got to fulfill his dream of producing the first movie about shark diving and I got to spend almost a whole summer photographing sharks.
Rusty documented almost every aspect of our lives as the story unfolded and originally it looked as though the footage was destined to become a TV series. In fact the first few episodes of 'Chasing Sharks' actually made it into the can but for a bunch of reasons the show finally morphed into a full length movie.
I got my hands on a copy a few weeks ago and chose to watch it while Eli was showing it for the first time on the big screen in Texas to a few hundred friends and acquaintances. I was nervous because it was the first time that any of us except Rusty had been involved in the movie industry and I was expecting to wince at the quality of the footage. I was thrilled with the result. It was obviously shot on a budget but the footage was awesome and more importantly it summed up the whole shark diving lifestyle that we have immersed ourselves in.
I guess it is hard to be unbiased about a movie that I am so much a part of but I think it is a landmark movie in the diving world. A little rough around the edges but it stands as the quintessential movie about shark divers. It has plenty of action, a strong conservation message and... its funny!
Eli and Rusty have submitted it to many upcoming film festivals. Hopefully it will be well received and stand up to the scathing cynicism of the professional critics.
Ultimately the movie is destined for DVD release sometime in 2009 so I hope that many of you will pick up a copy. If you're crazy enough about sharks to be reading this shark blog then you'll probably enjoy it.
For press releases and further info about 'Summer of the Sharks' follow this link: http://summerofthesharks.com

Today I loaded some more images of Porbeagles onto the shark pictures database on Elasmodiver. Some of the images are of a dead and bloody carcass of a Porbeagle Shark. They are quite gory and I am expecting some negative feedback. The dead shark was presented to the researchers that I was working with by a fisherman that found it wrapped up in a line. The images while provocative show the stark reality of life in the ocean especially when sharks come in contact with humanity.
There are still plenty of images that need to be cleaned up and loaded onto the site but I have been very low on time lately with the refit of the ship that I am working on. Next month we sail for Baja and then I will hopefully have a little more time to dedicate to shark photography. There are many species of sharks and rays in Baja that I have yet to shoot so I am looking forward to a very sharky year or two.
For the sharks,
Andy Murch