Raine Island - Nature's Cradle on the Edge of the Coral Sea
Satellite Web Cast From Turtle Heaven and Hell
Journal Entry - 12 - 4 - 02
Good news! The box jelly fish don't seem to be as venomous as first presumed. They do sting but but not too badly. We will night dive. In fact, tonight Richard's assistant Adam had and accident with a turtle this evening. Apparently, adam was standing in a turtle road, underwater, and literally got run over. The turtle ran in to his chest and bounced off. It is a miracle that he wasn't hurt. The turtle was none the worse for wear and sailed off into the night.
Another good day in Turtle Heaven and Hell. First, I won't be the only writer whose work you'll be reading. We are privileged to have the NHNZ Associate Producer who is writing the script (it changes all the time) for the documentary. Clive Copeman has worked with NHNZ five years, this time. He started out them and and then left to grow up a bit. But you can send him emails if you want and ask him questions. He has written successful scripts in a variety of different genres and plays a mean harmonica.
The big news today is that after dinner the turtle tagging team and some volunteers went ashore in the dark to see if they could locate the two turtles to which they attached tags last night. They tagged two turtles: one which has successfully nested and laid a clutch of eggs and another which had failed and turned back to the sea. Then this Am the team took the rubber dinghy and motored off to see if they could locate the turtles with the receiver. They were actually able to hear one of the turtles for a short time before they lost the tag signal - the turtle was deep and well off shore.
Early this morning I also had an exciting interaction with a school of very large bumphead parrot fish. I dropped off the back of the boat at 7:30 for a quiet morning dive with a long macro lens and swam right into the school. They were in a protective group clustered tightly together. I had seen the behavior before but never had the chance to properly photograph the fish. I shot a roll and a half of film of the fish before they slowly awoke from their overnight protective pattern and moved off. Sadly I have a few details to work on the digital housing so I have no shots to share of the parrot fish. We'll try again tomorrow.
Two other dives later in the day were spent experimenting with the digital housing to try and work out the kinks. Not too much left to pin it all down but the remains some work to be done.
Built on an Apple G4 Titanium Powerbook courtesy of Apple Computers Inc., Connected to the world by Iridium Satellite LLC and Digital eyes courtesy of Nikon - the new D100 digital camera, Captured on LexarMedia digital film.
© 2002, Paul Sutherland Photography LLC. All images and text on this and every other page on this web site are protected by US and international copyright law. No unauthorized use of any kind whatsoever is permitted.
Photo Captions:
• Paul's: Cameraman decided he HAD to try the digital housing so became his burro for a few minutes. Image © Richard Fitzpatrick.
• Richard At Work: Richard found a sea anemone in which the anemone fish has laid eggs which were about to hatch and was filming it when I took this shot.
• Follow the leader: Shot showing the reef layout and bad visibility we had today at low tide. Richard leading the way - he has to get to the subject first with his camera and Helen following.
• The View: When shooting production stills this is the view most of the time underwater. I am not allowed to get between the camera man and any potential subjects.