Sea Wild Cameramen at Work

Scotland...

a paradise for wildlife

and a cameraman's dream.

This country, with its rugged mountains and endless coastline,

has produced a generation

of the best wildlife cameramen in the world.

For decades, five filmmakers, all rooted in Scotland,

have travelled the globe to bring home incredible images,

shaping our understanding of the natural world.

How did these men learn the incredible skills

needed for catching the natural world in action?

What is it that prepared them for travelling the globe

and enduring the toughest of environments?

In this series, these five cameramen

will share their extraordinary stories

and the secrets of their trade.

Secrets often learned from filming wildlife

in the wildest parts of Scotland.

But this time the camera is on them.

The seas and oceans cover

almost three quarters of the Earth's surface.

But until recently the underwater world was a mysterious place -

little understood and only rarely visited.

Two remarkable Scots have helped change

our understanding of the deep -

Doug Anderson...

Oh, it's moments like that we do the job for!

..and Doug Allan...

That was just magic!

Between them they have captured some of the most awe-inspiring

images of ocean life to have ever appeared on television.

Filming wildlife underwater is a highly-specialised job.

Whether the subject is a tiny fish or a baby sperm whale,

it's a very different experience from filming animals on the surface.

WHALE CLICKS

Underwater wildlife is all about getting close to your subject.

You have to be able to follow them, you have to be able to work

close to them, so that needs a whole different set of almost

body language field skills around your animal than you do

topside, where you can stand away, or you can hide and where you often

use a long lens to, you know, to get big close-ups of your animals.

So, underwater wildlife is very different from topside wildlife.

Filming underwater means that

a cameraman is completely exposed to danger.

And filming certain species like oceanic white tip sharks can

therefore be a hazardous business.

When Doug Anderson set out to film these three-metre long predators

for Planet Earth, he had never been in the water with them before.

But he had an idea what they might be like.

I roughly think of them like little dogs you know.

And some little dogs are nice little dogs

and some little dogs are nasty little dogs!

Doug and the crew faced a real challenge in trying to locate

these open-water wanderers in the vast expanse of the ocean.

Time to throw the little dogs a bone.

What we've done is we've set up a chum line, which is basically

a case of hanging like an onion bag full of the most disgusting

offal that you can think of - the stuff that they couldn't even face

putting into Turkey Twizzlers - and waiting for some sharks to turn up.

It took us a long time to find those guys.

And when we found them, there was

a part of me that wished it would stop quite quickly, you know.

White tips are known man-eaters...

Oh, he's huge!

..notorious for attacking torpedoed sailors in the Second World War.

'In the water they are flighty and unpredictable.

'They can switch from being quite chilled out

'to really hot and aggressive and bumpy.

'They like to give you a nudge'

and then give you another nudge and give you another nudge

and they're sort of pushing you.

Each nudge just takes you to the next level of awareness.

A part of the trick with filming a shot like that in the open ocean

is keeping yourself down so you can get the photography right.

They're much easier to film when there's just one or two of them,

cos you can kind of keep an eye on them, whereas with three,

you're constantly counting.

It's like having three kids in the supermarket, you know, you're like,

"One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two... Aaaargh!" You know?

You turn around and, nine times out of ten, the third one is just

right on your shoulder blades.

When things do change, when you get that shift in behaviour,

then you need to be out of there and the filming needs to stop

and that's the balance.

Amazing!

Totally amazing!

In his career as an underwater wildlife cameraman,

Doug Anderson has travelled the world,

from the blue waters of the tropics to the ice floes of the poles.

But there's one place

that means more to him and his family than any other,

the Isle of Arran on the west coast of Scotland.

'Arran's where I came as a child,

'it's where I had my first experiences with the ocean.'

My dad made me a wet suit when I was about eight years old.

'It was ill-fitting and cold, but got it on, a couple of sessions,

'and, you know, sort of, I was away. It's what I did when I came here.

'Those first moments, I think, that people have with the ocean,'

wherever it is, are formative, and it's immediate.

'For me, it was putting on a half mask and putting my head underwater.

'It was a really important moment for me,

'and it's something that I've carried on into the rest of my life.'

For Doug, snorkelling was just the first step

towards exploring the underwater world.

He was soon learning how to dive.

Today, he's back in Arran,

visiting the man who took him on his first diving trips,

his uncle, Don MacNeish.

Taking anybody for their first dive is...

like a rite of passage, basically.

And I turned to you and said, "Well, what did you think of that, Doug?"

And, you know, "Yeah, it was all right."

HE LAUGHS

Then just a little smile at the side of his face appeared,

and I thought, "Yeah, he's hooked."

Yeah, I was!

It was amazing, that experience,

cos I remember that first dive so clearly,

being about 40 feet, you know, looking up at the surface,

reasonably clear water, and just watching waves and just thinking,

"That's what it looks like", you know?

It's just an extraordinary change.

You know, it's really a kind of a polar change

in the way that you understand the ocean, and it happens all at once.

'I've been diving for a long time now, but I'm an image-maker, really.

'My work is making pictures.'

And, really, the first part of that job is about

trying to unpick the behaviour,

about getting to know the location, and the animal, and the subject,

and the way it behaves, and getting into the water every day,

'and getting to know it a little bit at a time.

'That's wonderful.'

For the Life programmes,

Doug made a series of dives over several evenings

to unravel the mating behaviour of Australian cuttlefish,

a highly-intelligent species

whose love lives are full of elaborate deception.

'Its courtship, the patterns, the intrigue.

'I mean, it's Shakespearian.

'There are big males, big butch males,

'that kind of muscle around and grab females.

'And there's these other tiny little males'

that are specialist in pretending to be female.

These cross-dressing males hold their tentacles up

in a typically dainty female posture.

They even change their colour to mimic the females.

It's all so that they can creep in

and secretly seduce the butch male's partner.

But for the little sneaks, the stakes couldn't be higher.

'If the big male knew they were there,

'they would kill them and eat them.

'But, once they get in, they drop their guard,

'and they're mating with the females,

'literally right underneath these big protective males.

'It's like Macbeth, you know?'

And it's all happening right in front of you,

and covering it is just a dream.

'Everywhere you look, something interesting and wonderful

'and beautiful is happening.'

The seas and oceans are full of natural wonders.

But perhaps the most awe-inspiring is this...

..the blue whale.

Up to 170 tonnes in weight,

they're the biggest animals to have ever lived on our planet,

dwarfing even the dinosaurs.

But, despite their immense size, they are fast-swimming.

And, because of centuries of hunting, they're now very rare.

In all his four decades of experience as a wildlife cameraman,

Doug Allan had never managed to film a blue underwater.

But, on a trip to Sri Lanka for Ocean Giants,

he hoped to finally get a shot of this elusive titan.

'Blue whales have to be on everybody's dream list,

'they are the biggest animals in the world, but they're not easy.'

They always just seem to be interested in one thing,

and that is usually travelling.

Doug's first attempt to get up close to a blue

only underlined the extent of the challenge.

This is going to be difficult.

You know, those whales were... They didn't stop, they just kept on.

'Our only chance to get what we could of blue whales'

was to get in front of them when they were at the surface,

and then hopefully get them as they swam past.

'It took a long time to get in the right position.

'Eventually, we got a shot where this enormous blue

'sort of appeared underneath us.

'And this blue whale was probably about 80-feet long,

'so much bigger

'than any other animal I had been in the water with.'

'You know, it's like a train,

'it's like a train with lots of carriages on it, going past.

'You can't actually see the whole animal in one go.

'And it just has these mighty, powerful sweeps and then, bumph,

'and it's away and into the blue.'

'It was certainly the biggest whale that I've ever seen.

'It just looked enormous underneath me.'

I've waited a long time to see a blue underwater,

and that was just magic.

Doug Allan's career-long quest to film a blue whale

highlights one of the most important and least glamorous qualities

that a wildlife cameraman needs -

sheer dogged persistence.

'It's not just about the days where it all works.'

In fact, it's really about all the other days,

you know, where you wake up and you put in the hours

'and you've got barely enough time back in your bunk

'to warm up properly before the next day happens,

'and you get up the next day and do it again.'

And it's just like clam diving.

Clam diving was Doug's first professional job underwater.

He was only in his early 20's

when he started out in this notoriously tough industry.

Working off the west coast of Scotland,

he had to put up with gruelling conditions,

but he also made lasting friendships.

Doug, good to see you!

Today, Doug is meeting up

with one of his oldest friends from the clam boats, Martin Gorevan.

'The first time you go clam diving on the west coast of Scotland,

'it really is an experience.'

It's 100 feet of water, it's dark and deep and dangerous

-and you're by yourself, and...

-Yeah.

You do three dives a day, and each dive was half-an-hour to an hour.

'If the weather was good, you kept going until you couldn't do it any longer,

'so the longest stint you'd do is maybe 10 to 15 days on the trot.'

'Once you get good at it, you start feeling increasingly safe

-'but learning it is hard.'

-'Yeah.'

'If you spend a bit of time there, you just sort of think,

"I've done some hard hours up here,

"and whatever it is I do now, it's liable to be easier." You know...

It's the experience, as well, though,

the range of experiences you would have had diving.

I use it, I mean, I use that every day at work,

you know those skill sets that I learnt there.

It's what made me a diver, basically, you know? That time, those hours.

After four years of this demanding work, Doug knew he had to get out.

He still loved diving and he had a passion for photography.

But what to do next?

Inspiration came from a fellow Scot, Doug Allan,

who, at the time, was filming for Life In The Freezer.

'I remember seeing Doug Allan's name coming up on the credits,

'and I was just like, "Well, he knows a lot more about cameras than me,

"and he's also got the field craft." I was like, "How can I fix that?"

So, I found out from someone where the Natural History Unit was,

was Bristol, and I was like, "Right well, I'd better move to Bristol."

And so that's literally what I did.

Doug Anderson's big break came on a shoot for the Blue Planet series.

He was part of a camera team

filming one of the ocean's fastest creatures, Striped Marlin,

feeding on a shoal of sardines.

The surprise arrival of a 20-tonne sei whale on the scene

gave him the chance to get some unexpected footage.

'I was just running a little bit of film, and all I could see

'was the head of this sei whale, just crashing through frame.'

So, it was one of the most wonderful wildlife experiences of my life,

but at the time it was also one of the most stressful,

'cos I thought I'd run out of film.'

So, just about now, I'm hearing the film coming off the core

in my camera and just wondering how much of that shot I got.

After the shoot Doug had to wait a nail-biting month

before the film was developed

to find out if he had got the key close-up.

It turned out that his luck was in - but only just.

The last shot came up, and the whale came up,

'and then engulfed the shoal and then kind of fell away from me.

'And then the tail left frame, and the whole thing went black.'

There was six frames, which is about that much,

between the tail leaving frame of the sei whale

and the end of the roll.

You know, and I was just... I just could not believe it.

I was 29-years-old and this is like,

for a wildlife cameraman, for a young wildlife cameraman,

it's like scoring a goal in the FA Cup.

For wildlife cameramen, the shot is everything.

They'll put up with all kinds of hardships and hazards

to bring home the best footage.

But this focus on the job can involve some tricky dilemmas,

and occasionally some less-than-gallant behaviour.

I was diving with Sue, Sue was my wife at the time,

and we were filming humpback whales in Tonga.

'And, purely by accident, this whale came in contact with Sue,

'and I think the whale had forgotten about Sue being there

'and really got a big surprise at contacting something in the water.'

It flicked its tail really hard, and this whacked Sue in the leg

'and she dropped the camera.

I could see Sue at the surface. I could also see the camera,

which I knew there was a lot of good stuff on, heading for the depths.

So, I had to make a call - rescue Sue or get the camera.

'So I made the only call a cameraman could...'

I got the camera up.

Given the remarkable footage of humpbacks

that ended up in Planet Earth,

perhaps Sue might forgive Doug's sense of priorities.

The shoot certainly demonstrated the difficulty of filming

these lively heavyweights at close quarters.

But even filming small animals brings its challenges,

as Doug Anderson discovered on location off Tobago

for the Life series.

His mission was to try to capture super slow-motion images

of flying fish skimming over the waves.

The action is impressive this morning.

Unpredictable, but impressive. But it's distant.

You know, it's not happening next to the boat today.

Look, look, look. Loads!

The only thing for it was to get out amongst the flying fish

in a small inflatable.

All right, let's go!

This time, Doug and the team met with more success.

'We put this, like, £100,000 camera in a bin bag.'

HE LAUGHS

'Oh, I just had the most amazing afternoon.

'Tonnes of flying fish.'

I hadn't a clue what I was doing.

The whole thing happens faster than you can think,

so I was literally kind of pointing at a patch of ocean

'and then just whip-panning and just pre-setting the focus,'

and hoping these fish would fly somewhere near focus

and, of course they did.

He had managed to capture images never before seen,

flying fish taking to the air.

That was amazing!

We spent a long time in that wee boat today. Thanks.

The last two hours were just off the scale.

We were just getting shot after shot.

Having succeeded in filming flying fish on the surface,

it was now time to go underwater.

Here, Doug could film the fish

swarming around a floating palm frond to spawn.

'There are just fish everywhere.

'The females are spawning these sticky massed eggs.

'The males are coming in clouding them with sperm,

'and this thing just gets thicker and thicker and thicker.

'And all the females want to get inside it,

'cos that's the best place to put your eggs.

'And there's females dying in there,'

and the whole thing's getting heavier and heavier the whole time,

'so they know they've got to spawn on it before it sinks,

'because once it sinks, it's gone.'

Oh, it's moments like that we do the job for!

Everything was right. The light was right,

blue water,

the four tonnes of flying fish all going mental!

Doug was naturally feeling very satisfied with his day's work.

But the skipper, Barry, seemed to have something else on his mind.

RADIO CRACKLES

'Barry is this unbelievably relaxed guy.'

But I could see him getting a tiny bit agitated,

and it's like, "Oh, what's going on?"

And he was like, "Man, I've got to, I got to check the rudder," you know?

And I was like, "Really? Oh, OK. Go ahead."

I didn't really know what he was talking about.

We're all sitting in the back deck and he came up,

he'd kind of cut off what was part of this spawning mass.

'The fish had started to spawn on the rudder of the boat.'

I cleaned this off, like, five minutes ago. Right? Right?

Now the problem is there are too many flying fish around us.

If we go through the night with the lights on and stuff,

more and more and more will keep coming.

What they're doing here is, they're laying on the boat now.

The boat has become their object, and that is not good.

So, basically, you're worried that if we just stay on this drift,

we're going to sink the boat?

Five hours from now, that will be 3,000 pounds in the back here.

They will sink the boat.

OK, so we're going to leave, you're saying?

Yeah, we can't stay here!

Not in your wildest dreams do you expect to be on a boat

in Tobago that was at risk of sinking through the spawning of flying fish!

Just...you know!

But those are the good times, you know, definitely.

Some wildlife shoots, though, are not so happy.

For the Blue Planet series, Doug Allan spent six gruelling hours

on the plunging deck of a boat following a pod of killer whales

hunting down a grey whale and her calf.

Years on, the images haven't lost any of their power to shock.

'We were all absolutely knackered,

'not just from holding the camera steady

'and holding it on your shoulder all that time,

'but just, the emotional content was pretty harrowing.'

'What the orcas were doing

'was trying to separate the female from her calf.

'It was just mayhem, really.

'The calf was struggling to take a breath.'

The female too, and yet these big killer whales, there, you see? Bang.

'Right on top of the calf, and just drive it down deep under the water.'

'Look, it's actually riding on the back of the calf.

'And it follows it round and follows it round.

'It was inevitable, from about two hours in,

'that these killer whales were not going to stop.

'They had one thing on their mind,

'and that was to get the calf and to eat it.'

And it was just absolutely nature, red in tooth and claw.

'Eventually, we knew the calf was dead

'because all the killer whale activity stopped,'

and they were simply diving back, diving up and down the same place.

'And the female, well, there was nothing for the female to do

'except to carry on to the north and, I suppose, eventually,

'finish her migration.'

'When we discovered the calf the following day,

'I dived with it and I could see that the only thing

'that had been eaten was the lower jaw, and the tongue.'

'It was tough watching it

'but this is what happens in nature.

'We just happened to be there

'while this rare event was happening in front of us.'

The world's oceans are the scene of titanic life-or-death struggles.

But hidden beneath the waves are stories

that are the very opposite of brutal.

In the shallow seas off Australia,

Doug Anderson filmed the wonderfully graceful

and tender courtship of the tiny, weedy sea dragon.

'I loved filming the sea dragons.'

It's genuinely one of the most beautiful,

intimate moments I've had in wildlife.

'They're a cryptic species

'and I think that's what so special about this sequence.

'They spend most of their life trying to look like a piece of weed

'and not get eaten,

'and just for these tiny moments of their life history,

'hours in their year, they get together and dance.'

And being there for that is just amazing.

You know, I just can't, I can't describe it.

'It's just around dusk,

'so you've just got this tiny window of light

'before things just get too dark.

'They perhaps have been checking each other out all day

'and the males and females come together

'and they start doing this mirror dance.'

'It's really special. I remember filming this.

'The males just come underneath

'and they do this rhythmic head-butting,

'the females sort of go on their sides and rock slightly,

'and then they go back to mirror

'and then they'll do another pirouette and another dance,

'and they just, it keeps on going.'

'Very often it's the small stuff that I just get so much enjoyment out of.'

So, I left there very satisfied with this one, yeah.

On the Isle of Arran, Doug has returned to the spot

where his love of the ocean was first born.

He's taken his daughter, Holly, and is teaching her how to snorkel.

You all right, my dear?

Giving her a taste of the same breathtaking world

that inspired her father's career.

'I've spent my whole life in the ocean, really, my whole adult life.

'It's always a good place to go for solace or relaxation,

'or invigoration. It's a place of opportunity.'

'I really hope I can give my children enough good experiences

'with the ocean to give them a respect for it,'

and everything that's in it.

Sharing their experiences of the world's environments,

and encouraging our respect for the creatures that live in them,

has been the job of a group of gifted wildlife cameramen.

They've faced great hardships

to bring the wonders of the natural world to our screens.

But in all this, one thing has remained unchanged -

their own sense of awe

at the richness and fragility of the planet we all share.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd