Sleeping on the ocean floor, dreaming the Aquatic Human's dream ... to play with the dolphins ... to feel them ... to become one of them.
With the support of SEABOB and NAUTICAM this dream became reality for us. We were dolphins for a few days, witnessing how dolphins play, hunt, travel and love. We will never forget and hope by watching this video you can feel the same.
A very special project in so many different ways.
An old idea:
We remember seeing dolphins playing with a scooter 5 years ago on the Bahama Banks. Since then the idea got stuck in our head to dedicate the time and effort to explore the possibility of interacting with dolphins using a scooter. It was just after our first project with SEABOB (Aquatic Human I - • Aquatic Human - Diving... ) when we had the right moment and confidence to propose this idea.
Two questions:
We had two main questions to ask ourselves.
1.) Would we bother the dolphins? Would we disturb them and/or have any negative impact on them by approaching on scooters?
2.) Would the dolphins interact?
We spend time to discuss with scientists about our idea. Finally we came across the Dolphin Communication Project located in Bimni in the Bahamas. Together with them we started a respectful conversation about if and how we should give it a try. We learned so much about dolphins and how to respectfully interact with them. We are now 100% convinced that the Seabob Scooters enable us to meet the dolphins on eye-level, and that they enjoy having us around. During the filming we encountered so many different behaviours, each day was different. But the dolphins were not playful at all times. With a little bit of common sense you can see and respect that easily. Sometimes the dolphins engaged us to play for hours. Just as riding the frontwave of boats, the dolphins were riding in front of the Seabobs. Sometimes we had over 30 dolphins around us looking for interactions, playing and forgetting the time.
The team effort:
Nothing can beat the feeling to achive something TOGETHER. The more helping hands, eyes and brains, the better the feeling in the end.
NAUTICAM with Ryan Canon and Phil Burghard​ took care of mounting the Nauticam Weapon LT Housing on our Camera-Seabob ... testing it and finding the right counterweights to make this rig being stable in the water. Coming over on our first day to Bimini for a day of great company and testing alongside delivering supplies and encouragement, they are a great part of this project. Without them we would not have been able to film this project in 8K (RED Monstro 8K VV). The use of the Nauticam Wide Angle Conversion Port (www.wetpixel.com/articles/revi...) is the icing on the cake. You can find a detailed review here: www.wetpixel.com/…/review-naut.... All in all a perfect setup and surprisingly easy to use, even mounted on a Seabob.
SEABOB granted us total freedom to plan and execute the project. We are grateful to have clients like this who belive in us and are willing to dedicate resources to crazy ideas. Be sure we have a lot more of them to come.
Marta Lam won a Facebook Competition to join us on this project. She blended inn so quickly that we now can't imagine to ever work without her again. Thank you Marta for being such a sunshine, for all the hugs in the mornings, for cooking, preparing, making everybody feel good and also the great filming.
Special thanks to Kelly Melillo Sweeting and the Dolphin Communication Project for the valuable insights on how to interpret the dolphins behaviour.
Al Sweeting Jr ​, Kandi and Kevin Benedict for the great logistics on the water.
Idea, Camera, Edit: Florian Fischer
Aquatic Humans: Dada Li, Timo Dersch
Client: Seabob ( seabob.com/ )
BTM Team: Florian Fischer, Hamdan Chowdhury, Dada Li, Marta Lam, Timo Dersch
Making Of Video coming soon.
Supported by:
Nauticam ( www.nauticam.com )
OMS (omsdive.com/)
HECS aquatic ( www.hecsaquatic.com )
Keldan Lights ( www.keldanlights.com )
Boot Düsseldorf (www.boot.de)