Sardine Run Sunrise We’ve made a call to leave the harbour before sunrise in order to be out on the water to greet the morning sun and this morning we were rewarded with a cracker sunrise. The sky was quite overcast, and although the wind was relatively light from the south, the sea was still lumpy and quite rough, again a function of wind over current.

White Chinned Petrel A relatively quiet day at sea. Although all the predator players were on the stage (Common and Bottlenose Dolphin, Brydes Whales, Gannets, Skuas, Seals, Copper Sharks), the action was sporadic and spread out over a very wide area, again making filming quite tricky. We got some really nice shots of the gannets going, as well as some very evocative tracking shots of bottle nose dolphin with classic coast line in the background.

Shark this is Raven! Of real value to our production is our spotter, Eric, who provides invaluable information about bird, whale and dolphin activity within our range of operation. Having a spotter ensues that you’re pretty much guaranteed to lock onto your bigger targets on a given day, and certainly buys you the piece of mind that you’re not missing out on anything. That said, the extent to which the action is currently flareing up and just as quickly fracturing and dissipating means that often by the time you get into it and setup, its moved off or has died down.


Gannet on the hunt What’s becoming clear to me is the astounding amount of energy, time and skill that is necessary to capture footage worthy of a blue chip production such as the Blue Planet and Plant Earth. A number of variables need to come together, and if those variables are not there, Justin is simply not interested in shooting it. Tomorow wer’re taking out the Photron system for the first time, which is going to be interesting, I’ll report back on how that goes tomorrow.