All dressed up and nowhere to go

Quite a frustrating day today.

I went out on the water to try and capture some topside footage of the sharks feeding, but conditions were really not ideal. The anabatic winds that come up daily after midday had created a horrible surface chop. The winds are caused by intense thermal convection over the arid desert areas inland. This convection increases wind speeds during the day, drawing in cool air from the Indian Ocean in the east, with the effect that sea surface conditions become increasingly choppy in the afternoon. I had dive gear and the underwater housing with me, in-case we found another mass feeding aggregation (we didn’t).

After returning to the boat having not shot a single frame of video, I once more set up the topside light to try and get the whale sharks feeding at night. After a couple of hours a shark turned up, and soon after it a second. The sharks were casually feeding in the shaft of light, and excitedly I got into my dive gear and then headed back to the stern to watch the sharks and get a better idea of how they were behaving. I’d decided in my mind I would limit my dive time to around 20 minutes, far from ideal, but I knew that water would be slowly dripping into the camera housing still, so had to limit my time in the water to protect the camera. I watched the sharks for a few minutes and got straight in my mind exactly the shots I needed to capture. If this was going to be the only chance I had at filming sharks feeding at night, I had to make it count.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, both sharks cruised simultaneously out of the light and into the inky depths. Still fully clad in my damp wetsuit, I waited, and waited, and after many hours I gave up, the sharks were gone, and with them another golden opportunity.

Why had the sharks left? The previous night (when I couldn’t dive because of the issue with the housing) the shark stayed around for hours?

Equipment issues, weather problems and animals not behaving the way you’d like them to are all part of the wildlife film-making experience, but knowing this doesn’t make life any easier when things aren’t going you’re way!

It’s still early days though, and I have another week or so here, so I still hope to get everything I came for.

If at first you don’t succeed…