“No Holiday Camp”

Breakfast each morning in the station’s dining room, a veranda of sort that looks out over the reef flat and onto blue yonder, is usually full of banter with plans for the day being finalized according to the weather and the tides over several cups of Seychelles’ vanilla tea. This morning, there was silence and many cups of coffee. The whole team was feeling rather bleary-eyed after our mid-night unloading escapades and many days on the go in succession, on and in the water. My Dad often says to me with a smile on his face “Do you think this is a holiday camp” when referring to serious situations, and believe me our expedition is not a holiday camp. Photographers and cameramen are not afforded the luxury of going out when the conditions are perfect… to get the shots you have to try try try and try again, which means never ever giving up and going out again and again and again. No complaints though, I don’t think any of us would have it any other way.

After catching our breaths and catching up with important housework, writing, downloading, backing up etc etc. we headed back to the lagoon channel (where Dan floated around with his camera on the lilo) next to the research station and then went up one of the mangrove channels as far as the little tin boat could go. The tide was high and because the mangrove trees were submerged up to their leaves we could photograph right inside the heart of the underwater forest. Hoping that we would get some lemon sharks in the mangroves we pushed on until the sun had disappeared and we were left with little natural light. No sharks arrived, but it gave us a chance to photograph the mangroves themselves and use the light to decorate the water around them.