Sun cream. The first day of the trip to
Gran Canaria to find and hopefully film angel sharks, included the
need to rub sun cream into the three bald patches in my hair on the
sides of my head. Thanks to my over enthusiastic sister who rushed my
pre-film trip haircut. At least one part of my head had an extremely
long tuft, so I definitely didn't need to cream there.
The build up and organisation of the
trip was immense, and after months of planning, scrutiny and
re-planning, all the equipment, logistics and scripts were ready for
the film ahead.
One night and a four-hour plane journey
later, we were leaving the hotel, past the pool and to wait by the
corner of the palm tree lined road. The morning sun already warm as I
squinted my eyes in it's brightness. My old man used to tell me off
for squinting. He wouldn't be impressed; the crows feet (I prefer the
term bat-wings) from the corners of my eyes now well-defined as I
have taken little measures to prevent the need to regularly squint.
Swifts screamed and spun on the wing as they looked for nest sites
high up on the hotel walls.
The Davy Jones Diving van picked us up,
and the search for angel sharks had begun.
After meeting the team, we set the kit
up, loaded the small van, and headed to the El Cabron reserve. A vast
and barren landscape, windswept with little vegetation and a dark,
jagged rocky coastline cutting into the sea. Being an island in the
Atlantic Ocean, the winds get pretty high. Which means this jagged
rocky coastline gets battered with some fairly strong waves and
currents; making for some challenging entry and exits to the water!
I have never been diving in this part
of the world, and I was pleasantly surprised at how beautiful and
rich the underwater life and landscapes are.
Being close to Africa gives the area a
mix of typically North Atlantic species, as well as more
tropical-like fish.
Once in the water and relaxed, we began
the search for angels. Being a species of shark that is flattened,
and buries itself in the sand to lie in wait for prey to swim past,
we spent a fair bit of time looking over a sandy underwater
landscape, mesmerising with the dancing beams of sunlight swirling
across the sea floor.
Cuttlefish, with their insane ability
to change the colour and pattern of their skin with pigments called
chromatophores, lay invisible on the seabed or on the rocky reef.
Completely unnoticeable until they pop up, hover in the water, raise
two arms and propel off over the rocky reef and out of sight once
again.
Barracuda always seem pretty chilled.
Like they know that there isn't much that can mess with them.
Whenever I've seen barracuda, they seem to steadily and confidently
cruise past. No fuss.
Upon approaching an octopus squeezed
into a gap under a boulder, it stretched out its arms, puffed out its
chest and pushed itself through the water like a torpedo.
 |
But we had come to film the sharks. The
first thing you find are their beds in the sand. The places where
they have been laying, with everything buried except their eyes and
maybe a dorsal fin or two.
 |
| Diagonally, on the left handside you can make out where an angel was laying |
With angel sharks, like all wildlife,
it is hit or miss, pure chance, whether you are in the same place as
them at the same time. And we can only stay down for as long as our
equipment and dive time allows. Two dives a day for four days and,
without spoiling too much, we found them. And I could not be happier
with our encounters. My mum is not a shark fan, mostly because of
their 'black, dead eyes'. Lots of species of sharks have varied and
colourful eyes (Although, I admit, the greenland sharks eyes are
pretty freakish: link greenland shark photo). And angel sharks, in my opinion, have one of the most beautiful
eyes of any fish I have seen. Almost golden with camouflage and a
thin slit for the pupil, their eyes are an extension of their bodies
colouration.
Angel sharks are one of the rarest
sharks in the world – wiped out from the majority of it's range
across Europe. As part of the film, we met with some great dedicated
scientists and conservationists for interviews, set up to study and
ultimately help conserve angels sharks, as well as other marine life,
using a variety of methods.
Please check out The Angel SharkProject, a collaboration between the University of Las Palmas Gran
Canaria, the Zoological Society of London and the Zoological Research
Museum Alexander Koenig.
We also met with Krupskaya from the
ElasmoCan project.
Top work!
I wanted some visually interesting
locations for some presenter led parts of the film. So a long walk in
temperatures that reached over 40 celcius to Gran Canaria's very own
part of the Sahara desert was due. Maspalomas sand dunes.
Being close to the equator during
summer time, the days felt unusually short, with sunrise at 07:30am
and the darkness setting in well before 09:00pm. Every night we would
walk the length of Playa del Ingles to get ice cream. And indulge in
a bit of feral cat watching.
I didn't see a single lizard on this
part of the island. Could the high cat and low lizard populations be
linked? Or maybe the habitat for lizards is poor, I am not so sure.
A heap of thanks go to everyone
involved at Davy Jones Diving. While I was there, we put together a
little promotional video for Davy Jones. Check it out below...
