“All for a Bowl of Soup” is the most no-nonsense piece I’ve seen about the global shark finning problem. It combines facts with awe-inspiring footage of thousands of shark fins being pulled into a single fisheries facility in a single day.

The show features my friend, Shawn Heinrichs, and a significant amount of his investigative footage showing huge numbers of shark fins in processing facilities, as well as footage of a live, finned shark suffocating to death. It also includes about a minute of my shark footage shot in the wild.

“All for a Bowl of Soup” hatched as a plan between me and Derek Reich, a freelance cameraman who does a lot of work with HDNet. We had been talking about it for awhile, but finally hashed out a proposal when we happened to both be stranded in New York during Hurricane Irene last year.

If you have half an hour to spare, please download and watch “All for a Bowl of Soup” from iTunes. If you are moved by the piece, please donate to Shark Savers—my conservation organization of choice—or to your chosen shark conservation organization, and spread the word!¹

In July, I went to French Polynesia with Fabrice Charleux of Plongeur.com to capture stills and video of the incredible schools of gray reef sharks that call its remote atolls home. At that time, I posted only a few still frames from the trip—not because I didn’t want to share, but because I had something larger planned. When I returned home, I called up Mary Lynn Price of DiveFilm and asked her if she would be interested in collaborating in a podcast episode. Luckily, Mary Lynn was excited about the project, and together, we have finally finished and published a new DiveFilm HD episode on the sharks of French Polynesia. To see the video, please download it from iTunes. DiveFilm is currently the only ocean-related podcast featured by Apple, and the only way to make sure it stays there is to have folks download and view it through iTunes!

Links to podcast: DiveFilm HD on iTunes. The episode is called “Shark Diving French Polynesia!”

Special thanks to Fabrice Charleux (gracious host and organizer; translator; subtitling), Mary Lynn Price (editor; podcast goddess), Don Kehoe (grumpy photo assistant), Dave Patchen (supporting friend), Adam Tow (interview camera assistance) and Rae Chang (interview assistance). This would not have been possible without all of you!

Footage taken with Canon 7D, Canon S95, and GoPro Hero camera in Eye of Mine flat-port housing.

Performance artist Alice Newstead hangs herself from shark hooks at LUSH Cosmetics in San Francisco to draw attention to the plight of sharks and to garner support for AB 376, a proposed bill that will ban shark fins in California. Event organized and sponsored by LUSH Cosmetics and Shark Savers.

More information from Shark Savers:

• California AB 376 shark fin ban Mid-August update and action alert
• California AB 376 Talking Points

Photo gallery follows:

The video is best viewed at 720p in some sort of 3D mode.

If you own a 3D display at home, you can download a higher-quality side-by-side version for local display (~99MB; link is good for 500 downloads; if it fails, please let me know). The downloadable video is still highly-compressed and doesn’t quite convey the same 3D coolness that original version does, but it is still effective!

On the second day, we discovered a small patch of ocean with hundreds of tightly-packed whale sharks. They were so dense that they were forced to feed in layers, and we saw as many sharks ascending and descending as we did on the surface of the ocean (very rare). Our guides were totally excited, saying that the ocean was infestado with whale sharks. After thirty minutes of total whale-shark insanity, the sharks vanished in a coordinated descent into the depths—it was totally bizarre. One minute, we were surrounded by literally hundreds of sharks, and the next, there were only a few left on the surface. All of us, including the local guides, were totally dumbfounded by the strange behavior.

Today (day 3), we found the sharks 4 miles east and 2 miles south of where they were yesterday. It took a coordinated search effort by multiple boats to find them (which took 3.5 hours on the water), and we weren’t in the water until 9:45am. The action was fantastic, with botellas almost literally everywhere we looked (a botella is a stationary whale shark that is vertical in the water, “gulping” water constantly to feed.

I’ve been shooting with both a Nauticam-housed Canon 7D with Tokina 10-17 fisheye zoom lens, and with a 3D GoPro HERO setup (with Eye of Mine 3D underwater GoPro housing). The 3D GoPro setup has been yielding some very interesting footage because I can get the camera in places where a big housing can never go (e.g. right in front of a whale shark that is cruising at speed). I have some interesting 3D footage that I’d love to present, but two failed upload attempts to YouTube are enough; I’ll upload when I return to the States.

In the meantime, here’s a 3D screen-grab from the video (red/cyan 3D glasses required):

3D whale shark gulp with GoPro 3D HERO camera / Eye of Mine 3D underwater housing

I also have cute / precious footage of Kieran Liu (the 5-year-old son of my friends Kenny and Lori) swimming madly after a whale shark (and managing to get really, really close). He is fearless!

Update: here are links to the videos:

• Kieran Liu swims with a whale shark
• 3D whale shark feeding video

SHARKS! Video grab from a dive at the south pass of Fakarava

This is a screen grab from a video I took while diving the south pass of Fakarava (Tumakohua). There are hundreds of gray reef sharks there, just hanging out in the current. It was every bit as incredible as it was the last time I was there.

We did two shark dives in Tahiti hosted by TOPDIVE-Bathys dive center. I’ve done shark dives all around the world, and was really impressed by the number of gray reef sharks in the area. We had approximately 50 gray reef sharks, a few black-tip reef sharks, and a couple lemon sharks. A tiger shark has been at the dive semi-regularly, but it didn’t show up for us.

Given that Tahiti is an easy, 8-hour flight from LAX, the shark dive at TOPDIVE-Bathys might be the most accessible dive with lots of sharks for those of us who live in California.

I’m told that the baited dive is both new and controversial here on the island, and interestingly, the Tahiti shark dive isn’t even highlighted on the TOPDIVE-Bathys website (but the Moorea shark dive is). But given the quality of the local shark dive, it will no doubt attract a good number of divers in the shark diving community.

I’m getting excited about the upcoming Wetpixel Whale Shark Aggregation trip! This photo was taken during last year’s aggregation and shows off the size difference between man and the biggest fish in the ocean.

It’s no wonder videographers use huge watermarks in the middle of their videos (like I do with my stock video).

Shark bite! Lemon shark at the surface (Negaprion brevirostris). Bahamas “lemon snap.”

I found these old images while looking through my shark library yesterday. Ahh, the good ol’ days…

Lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris) at the surface, Bahamas (the so-called “lemon snap”)

Lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris) at the surface, Bahamas

Lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris) at the surface, Bahamas