East Coast Sunrise This morning Mark Addison, Justin Maguire and myself left the East London Harbour just after sunrise in search of sardine run activity to film for the BBC’s new series on the earths amazing events. As we left port we saw our spotter Eric fly overhead, having taken off a little while earlier some 30km’s to the north. With no serious targets confirmed north, we headed south, with fingers crossed and a growing confidence in our newly rigged filming platform.


Common Dolphin Within an hour of steaming we picked up an activity cell going off really close to the beach, with some fantastic land scenery in the background.  Quickly Justin and I mounted the camera and powered up the Perfect Horizon system in a procedure that is fast becoming second nature and routine. With the wind negligible, and the swell gentle, the conditions for filming were perfect, and with Mark steering us onto the action we filmed some classic gannet sequences interspaced with dolphin and humpback whale activity.

Humpback Whale At one point a humpback whale which we were tracking slipped behind us and then sounded right next to the boat, which was a real treat. The common dolphin were also very much in the mix today, and we witnessed a training outing, with parents teaching a host of ‘foot longs’ (Mark’s term for small dolphin) how to blow a bubble curtain around a shoal of sardines in order to herd them into a bait ball, which again was very special.

Sunset in East LondonBy 12pm the wind had picked to the point where it had become very difficult to film, so we steamed back into the harbour and continued work on rigging the boat for the Photron system. Around 4.30pm the wind died quite suddenly and we headed out again for a quick look, but found nothing exceptional, except that warm water was pushing in, which was not what we wanted to see. Tomorrow we leave earlier to maximise the flat time before the wind picks up.