Our World – Underwater Scholarship Society in North America

On mission with Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation and the International League of Conservation Photographers representing iLCP, photographer Michele Westmorland and I had the unique opportunity to shoot the turquoise waters where Tahiti’s famous black pearls are grown.

Pearls come in a rainbow of colors, but Gambier has the reputation for the finest pearls in French Polynesia and a distinct blue-green shade produced nowhere else in the world.

One of the Tahitian free divers retrieving an oyster filled screen.

It was a vigorous start to the morning with Dominique Devaux, the head manager for GIE POE O RIKITEA teaching us about the pearl farm industry. Starting with the freedivers amid the labyrinth of pearl lines to pull in oyster baskets, it was an amazing experience photographing the task – underwater. After years hanging in the water column, filter feeding on the plankton, and secreting a shiny compound called nacre, the pearls inside these bivalves were ready to be harvested.

A delighted group of pearl free divers. Amazing young men.

Flashback to oysters’ young lives: A spat, at one year old (science’s word for oyster baby) is ready to be seeded. The shell is pried open with a special wooden wedge peg in order to reach inside for graphing.  The oyster is alive (and hopefully will stay that way) so opening the shell as little as possible and swift skillful handling are essential.

Quick and gentle opening of the oyster is essential.

A technician slides a small square of mantle tissue, muscle from a donor oyster with great color, and a small nodule (called a nucleus) into the oyster body.  You could easily hire these Tahitian women in any dentist office across America after seeing how precisely they move big sharp metal tools in tiny places!

A technician implants the nucleus that will be the base for the pearl.

Oysters plop back into the water for the waiting game.  It will take 45 days before managers will know if the oyster accepted the graph and another year or two before the pearl is ready for harvest. Graphing is a highly developed skill so technicians label their batches of work and are evaluated individually on how many quality pearls are produced each cycle.

Pearls are divided by size, color, and shape before being osld at auction around the planet. Dark, rich colors command the highest price.  Flattened pearls, called keshi, grow when an oyster rejects its impanted nucleus but still has the donor tissue inside its body.

In the wild only about 1 in 2000 oysters are growing a pearl inside. Pearl farming has upped the odds and satisfied the global market.  Working as a pearl technician is a college-trainable position and farms are a backbone to the Tahitian economy particularly in remote island chains like Gambier. Without pesticides, antibiotics, fish-food spillover or heavy nutrient influx, pearl farming is a very low impact aquaculture practice.  Culturally the black pearl is an icon of French Polynesia and an ocean fashion statement you can wear proudly as a symbol of healthy ocean stewardship on a homegrown level.

The result of an oyster’s life on the farm held by one of the lovely technicians. Beautiful tattoo!

Just remember to thank the whole team of oysters who chipped in on your layered strands, as an oyster will only produce 1-3 pearls in its lifetime!

What girl doesn’t love pearls delivered by the trunkful?

The Living Ocean Foundation team is hard at work at Hao Atoll, far flung in the Tuamotu Islands of French Polynesia. We’re six days into the first EVER comprehensive reef assessment for this beautiful coral atoll. Normally I would feel right at home on the fish team counting schools, but this cruise has a twist. I’m here creating images rather than recording data!  This adventure I’m the photo assistant for Michele Westmorland on assignment for the International League of Conservation Photographers.

Michele has a vast portfolio and unique talent for world-class imagery across genres– including underwater and commercial projects. She could make the most boring shot sparkle with her eye for detail. There’s some serious girl power assisting for my first time with one of the only female pro photographers in the industry!

Photo assistant is a catch-all term for making it go smoothly. I love that every day is different: tracking colorful critters on the reef, wrangling a lighting bounce in the tropical breeze, repairing strobe batteries, chasing down manta rays, or scuba modeling (seriously much harder than it looks). Today I even dabbled in the art of fruit bowl arranging when we needed some extra color for a cabin shot. Oranges, apples, and kiwis need to be equidistant from bananas to get just the right pop.  You really never know what skills you’ll learn along the scholarship road!

ASSISTANT BONUS- While toting super nice camera systems for Michele I get to play with them! Every lens can capture a different perspective of a reef, and they’re great to experiment with. This is the first time I’ve shot macro close-ups and love the challenge.  Here are a couple of my favorite shots so far.

Hao Atoll Inner Lagoon

Cushion star close up OR chocolate chip flash mob?

What do you think they’re saying?

Caption this shot in a comment below or let me know on the Megan Cook- Ocean Ambassador Facebook page

Scholars are all about teamwork!  Thank you to Oscar for writing this awesome blog about our time together being archaeologists in the Dominican Republic.

After the cold and dark waters of North Carolina, Megan and I boarded planes headed for the Dominican Republic.

We were going to work with Dr. Charlie Beeker from Indiana University on an excavation of Senora la Nuestra de Begona, a wreckage site from 1725. Charles has been working towards raising awareness of historical sites along the Dominican coast for many years. He has chosen awareness as his tool. His long career catalogs success establishing underwater parks for preservation and education which display authentic archaeological pieces like cannons and anchors for divers to see.

Founding Los Museos Viveos del Mar- Living Museums of the Sea, Charlie is partnering with government officials to ensure history is protected, preserved, and used for the benefit of all rather than auctioned the highest bidder. Artifacts under the sea represent an important cultural heritage for the places they reside and the era they explain. An added global benefit is museum sites are off-limits to fisherman creating biological havens along with cultural ones.

In the Dominican Republic, wrecks are plentiful.  Many treasure hunting organizations have gathered to search for valuable cargo buried deep in the sand together with the ships that carried them. Indiana University provides an alternative to the treasure hunters in finding and preserving the history of the island.

Megan and I met up with Rodrigo, the Museum’s in-country coordinator and a Peace Corp volunteer.  Rodrigo hosted us for two days on the southern coast in Bajahibe diving several of the underwater museums. The sites fit carefully into the surrounding reefs and are labeled so anyone underwater can enjoy the history surrounding them. Thank you to Rodrigo and our host diver center ScubaFun for spending the days getting us habituated into Dominican life.

In Bajahibe, we also were able to join the first ever lionfish tournament for the region.  There were over 800 fish brought in by spearfishermen and scuba divers.  Lionfish are native to the Pacific and have exploded across the Caribbean after being wrongly introduced.  A single lionfish can eat 80% of the juvenile fish on a small coral reef in only five weeks.  The invasion means serious trouble for already damaged reefs in the Atlantic. It’s encouraging to see a town come together to do something proactive for the health of their ocean.

After a few days we proceeded to the capital, Santo Domingo, where we met up with the team from Indiana and Yolly, our Australian scholar. The work could begin on the site of merchant ship Senora la nuestra de Begona. In 1725, she was transporting goods (and contraband silver) trying to avoid the authorities when she started to take on water. Several days of effort were made to try to save her while a massive storm developed offshore. Sailing up and down the coast they realize they would have to either be smashed upon the cliffs or run her aground on the only available strip of beach. Once plowed into the surf and sand, efforts to salvage as much precious cargo as possible were attempted but in the hard weather much of it was lost between the ship and shore. Amazingly, no souls were lost as the storm battered the ship apart. Finally she went under and the captain was forced to face authorities for misrepresenting the purpose of his mission.  He was charged with crimes against the Spanish crown and the historical story in records goes cold before his sentencing.  No serious efforts were ever made to return for all that was lost.

Indiana University had returned for the Begona. We concentrated our work near shore where the lost items had fallen during rescue attempts and settled into a sandy bottom- buried for nearly three hundred years. With metal detectors, different hotspots where found that could be used as starting places for dredging.

Charlie and his team had made exciting discoveries here like talegas (bags of silver coins), dinnerware, candlesticks and even a cannon.  They were thrilled to be back to search for more artifacts. Shortly we were put to work with dredging sand, because As Charlie said, “it’s all out there. You just need to move a lot of sand!”

To aid us working underwater we each wore Guardian full face masks fitted with Buddy phone communication systems from Ocean Technology Systems. OTS was kind enough to come to DR to train us in the use of the masks and communication systems which proved valuable when working together underwater.

Conveying messages like “Megan, would you come over here and dig just a little bit on this side of the cannon but no more than about two centimeters and go slowly” or “ Yolly, could you swim over to the exhaust and check what has happened to the dredge? I think I’ve blocked it with a rock or two” is somewhat beyond my sign language skills.

When we slowly started to find artifacts, there was no stopping us!  Each shift we nearly had to be dragged out of the water when it was time for the next team to take over. The dredge was powered on nonstop from morning to afternoon with a rotating circuit of divers underwater. Significant efforts were rewarded by bringing up amazing piece after amazing piece.

We uncovered everything from pre-European contact Tai’no pottery, to silver candlesticks, even an ornate sword hilt and musket. I soon learned to appreciate the trained eyes of the archeologists who could spot a centimeter size piece of pottery when moving literary tons of sand at high speed. As if that’s not enough lightning speed dart hands could catch it before it was sucked up the dredge. We all had our go at hanging on to the high power dredge while being thrown around in the surge, which made for some very interesting dives.

Each and every item that was brought ashore was documented carefully, photographed and numbered before being carried to the lab for further work.  The detective work of puzzling out each artifact is fascinating. This small piece which started off looking only like scarp metal turned out being a silver coin traceable back to a mint in Mexico City 1700!

All of the objects are the property of the Dominican government. Some artifacts are loaned to Indiana for study and preservation, but that needs lots of paperwork and help from the right people.  These permissions are not always the easiest thing to gain but Charlie and his team doesn’t let this stop them.

After a time filled with both fun and hard work we left the DR behind for new adventures and having learnt something completely new to us all. Thank you very much to Charlie Beeker and Indiana University for welcoming all three scholars together.  We truly enjoyed earning our ‘Junior-archaeologist’ badges.

Where I went you will soon find out but it wasn’t too far…

How much do we really know about the planet’s coral reefs? Destinations like Hawaii or Cayman get millions of visitors every year, but have you heard the latest from Mangareva Atoll or Navassa Island? Could you find them on a map? (No Google cheating) The Khaled bin Sultan Living Ocean Foundation is circling the globe studying the planet’s jeweled coral belt and sharing these special places wiringth the world. LOF brings together world class researchers, writers, students and local teachers to push the frontiers of coral reef conservation and exploration. This mission they’ve added an ILCP photographer and Rolex Scholar to the team!

Michele Westmorland and I joined LOF’s vessel the Golden Shadow in French Polynesia. We’re headed for the Gambier Islands, a small group of coral atolls peeking up from the ocean more than a thousand miles southeast of Tahiti.

It’s easy to throw around huge numbers but hard to comprehend how massive the Pacific Ocean really is.  If I start walking west from here, ignoring the drowning, the first continent I hit is Australia more than 3700 miles away. This trek is like walking from California to Virginia, realizing I forgot something and making it halfway back. If my afternoon stroll aimed me east instead, it would be 4800+ miles until I slogged up the beaches of South America! I could get the same exercise hiking from England to India.

We’ve been steaming for two days to reach our first research site- Hau Atoll. The ship is full of activity with scientists prepping sampling equipment and filling our arsenal of scuba tanks. Michele and I are busy shooting images for LOF marketing and mission.

Tomorrow everyone hits the water and truly groundbreaking science – the island’s first ever marine population assessment – begins. What do you think we’ll find?  Check out more on Facebook and stay tuned for more from the South Pacific!

Fun fact: This tiny island is essential to NASA’s space program, can you guess Hau?

Hey friends and followers!

I recently saw Jill Heinerth’s new documentary film We Are Water and you need to too!  Check out the We Are Water trailer (and my debut as an associate producer)!

We Are Water is both a passionate expose’ of today’s out of control water usage and an imaginative exploration of spiritual and essential connection to the water all around us.  While I was in Florida in June I had the huge pleasure to assist filming this film. Jill’s passion for discovery and great shots even led us on an ‘urban-caving’ expedition in the storm sewers of Gainesville.  After being chased off by security personnel and evading biological waste warnings, we got some very cool shots tracing water’s journey to your tap. I couldn’t be more proud to contribute to a project of this caliber.

This is a movie that everyone needs to see!  Remember- everything that goes down your drain ultimately ends up back in your glass!  Water is our most universal connection on the planet. We drink it, dive in it, fight wars for it, share it with our families, and ultimately are composed of it.  Jill awakened in me a passion for water advocacy. This film is an entertaining, solution-focused look at how each of us can handle the worlds’ water woes.  After all, we are water!

Jill is going to bike across the continent screening this film this summer!  Find a screening date near you!

In the middle of November I hopped on a plane for Las Vegas and the 2012 DEMA show!

This event was my chance to reconnect within the industry and schedule plans for the second half of my scholarship year. DEMA was also the first chance since April to connect with my partners-in-crime– European Scholar Oscar Svensson and Australasian Scholar Yolly Bosiger.  Oh how I have missed them!

Both have been experiencing the most incredible year. It was surreal to hear how much is possible within only 6 months! If you haven’t read up on Yolly or Oscar I think you ought to!

DEMA is an enormous trade show with a huge gathering of dive manufacturers, retailers, destinations, distributors, and dive operations managers.  It’s dive-extravert’s paradise with tons of people to meet and lots of folks to introduce Yolly and Oscar to. This handsome fellow gave me a hard sell about scheduling a dive trip to Borneo!

I was thrilled to sit in on the private launch of Aqualung’s 2013 gear line mid-week. Expect teasers online soon but suffice to say I am REALLY excited to be diving with sneak peeks as part of the A-Team.

Always great to see the enthusiastic staff of Bonnie Publishing group who keep the world fascinated with great writing and beautiful images in Scuba Diving, Sport Diver, Undersea Journal & Alert Diver magazine. It has been really fun continuing to work together since my visit this summer.

Hollis/Oceanic launched their Explorer rebreather, a recreational unit, ready to throw open the doors of rebreather technology for divers around the world.  Nick Hollis has been incredibly supportive of my transition into sidemount and preparing me for technical diving. I’ll be crossing my fingers for a chance to train on the Explorer as the year continues, and you should be too!

The tradeshow floor is almost impossibly huge and after days of wandering I still kept coming to booths I had never seen before! Like kids in a candy store the scholars darted around after shiny promotions and new amazing products. We lost Yolly, but Oscar and I ran into one another at the Ocean Technology Systems booth and tried on the very cool Guardian full-face masks.  OTS is one of OW-USS’s newest sponsors and will be training the whole crew in underwater communications in the Dominican Republic.

Oscar….. I AM YOUR FATHER!!!!

Thanks also to the National Park Service for their support of OW-USS. Fun fact: the National Park Service currently employs more divers than the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration! That’s because there are water activities (including scuba diving) in almost all 61 of the US National Parks! Think you can name them all?

DEMA is also the industry’s chance to recognize the leaders who have contributed a lifetime to our underwater world.  The Academy of Underwater Arts and Science’s NOGIs and DEMA’s Reaching Out awards were wonderful chances to don our fanciest and celebrate those who made this path for others to follow.  Great supporter of the Scholarship and all-around-nicest-human-on-the-planet Dar Orr was honored with the Reaching Out award for lifetime service this year.  I was extremely proud to be one part of a huge DAN fan club.

We laughed and danced the night away with a Blues Brothers cover band straight out of the movie!

“We’re on a mission from GOD!”

DEMA is an exhausting few days on your feet, but it’s wonderful to march down aisles among sponsors and share my thanks for making a year like this possible. My sincerest gratitude to GoPro, Ultralight Control Systems, Olympus, Backscatter, Fourth Element, Light & Motion, DUI, Pelican, Ocean Technology Systems, DAN, and iDive for ensuring I have been ready to tackle every new chance to learn all year.  Thanks also to Pascal Lecocq for keeping the art in the ocea with your generous donation for each of us.  If you haven’t checked out the amazing color of blue Pascal paints with, see his quirky sense of humor and ocean expression here.

Thanks to all the scholarship society family who made it to DEMA this year.  It was awesome to get (almost) all of you in one shot!

And of course no trip to Vegas is complete without hitting up the slots!  Thankfully no one had to pawn any timepieces.

Hi friends and followers! I decided to mix up the model a little and write to you before an experience rather than after.

With the holidays fast approaching I was wishing for a white Christmas- a VERY white Christmas! Santa seems to be smiling on me this year and in only a few hours I am boarding a flight for the holidays in ANTARCTICA!

I am extremely proud to be representing the Our World- Underwater Scholarship Society on board the National Geographic Explorer in Antarctica with Lindblad Expeditions. National Geographic photography team David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes and Lindblad Expeditions President Sven-Olaf Lindblad invited me to share this ten day adventure along the Antarctic Peninsula.  Lindblad Expeditions is the global leader in transforming tourism with respect for natural and cultural environments and a suite of best practices.  Lindblad Expeditions continues to approach expedition travel as a catalyst for making a difference in one’s life, and in the world. I have tons to learn from these leaders.

Even from the farthest reaches of our globe I will be online and updating throughout the trip. Doesn’t technology blow your mind sometimes?  Photos and stories will be posted on the Megan Cook-Ocean Ambassador facebook page.  If you haven’t LIKED it already, please help me get to my New Year’s goal of 1,000 followers!  Share the adventure with your friends and post questions on the page that our expert team of divers, naturalists, and explorers to answer for specifically you!

Lindblad Expeditions team will also be emailing out daily expedition reports and video highlights from the ice. Give yourself the gift of adventure and sign up for Antarctica in your inbox. It gives me holiday warm fuzzies to know you are following along on my first swim or first penguin encounter.  Sign up for expedition reports at expeditions.com/dersignup.  My trip name is Journey to Antarctica: The White Continent and my departure date is December 19^th.

Today I’m flying into Buenos Aires, Argentina for an over-night and full day of exploring.  (Tango lessons anyone?)  Wednesday I’ll join the expedition team flying to the town of Ushuaia at the far tip of the South American continent and the stepping through the gateway to the icy world below.  Once on board we’ll steam the legendary Drake Passage over two days and arrive on the ice for exploration, photographic documentation, and conservation education.  I am BEYOND excited!   I have new eyes for the ice having never been anywhere like this before. Antarctica represents our last wilderness in my mind.  I have so many questions to ask about her! This year has brought me the opportunities of my dreams; this is a holiday to match. Be excited; I’m already looking to find the words to describe what snorkeling in icy seawater feels like!

Don’t miss a single minute- check out the Facebook updates now and get yourself situated for a front-seat view of the icy continent from the expedition reports.  Merry Christmas in advance! I could never be in this position without the encouragement and support of ocean lovers like you.  I’m sending you each warm wishes from a chilly place!

I spent an inspiring week in Monterey, California attending the BLUE Ocean Film Festival and Conservation Summit. In only its third session BLUE has already grown to be the premiere ocean event of its kind and collected the highest talent from the science, media, film-making, conservation, and public communities. In a week jammed by not only films, but networking events, panel discussions, luncheons and marquee events I spent all week buzzing from session to session soaking up all that I could.

My inspiration and aspiration, Dr. Sylvia Earle spoke throughout the week and I was honored to finally meet her and share some laughs. Her message for BLUE re-centered my drive to aggressively share all I have had the chance to see in our oceans and get that knowledge out to new people.

Too often particularly for young people the ocean’s problems can seem gargantuan, too large to solve, and without hope. She pronounced that now, more than ever in history is the very moment to choose to be alive living with the ocean. Over the last 30, 40, 50 years there was no way we could have known the impacts we were making on our oceans. As a global community we extracted seafood out of and disposed of waste into the ocean as if it was simply too vast to every feel the impact of our actions. We didn’t have the knowledge, technology, or tools to know what we know now. 90% of the large fish in the ocean are dead and gone. 50% of the world’s coral reefs are dead! Since the industrial revolution, there’s 30-40% less plankton (basic food chain foundation) in the global ocean. We looked out from our coastlines and saw an ocean too big to fail. There’s no way we could have known differently at the time.

But now we know. And now is the time we must change! The oceans are the life-support system for everything we know on this planet. 50% of the oxygen you breathed today was made by the ocean’s phytoplankton. 15% of the world’s protein comes straight from the ocean. The seas regulate our weather cooling the land with breezes and creating rain for the world’s agricultural regions. Now is the chance to open doors for ocean stories and ocean awareness. Now is the time to look at the world with new eyes and safeguard the blue heart of the planet.

BLUE was a week spent with many icons. I spent a wonderful evening chatting with the visionary Chris Welsh, pilot of the Virgin Oceanic submersible program. At last I met cameraman extraordinaire and fellow Aqualung ambassador Andy Brandy Casagrande IV and his lovely wife Emma. One evening I sat and chatted with Captain Don Walsh one of two men to dive to Challenger Deep (35,814 feet deep) aboard the Trieste in 1960. I was very proud to later in the week be present for the presentation of Captain Walsh’s lifetime achievement award. Another night I met Jim Toomey the cartoonist behind the brilliant Sherman’s Lagoon and the voice of the United Nations Environmental Program’s two- minute PSA campaign. During a gallery viewing I met Bryan Skerry whose beautiful photographs have inspired countless millions to take a fresh look at the ocean around them or far beyond the horizon.

Andy and Emma Casagrande

At BLUE I connected with the MacGillivray family, the drivers of MacGillivray Freeman Films the best underwater IMAX group in the world and founders of One World One Ocean campaign which does the work I love- telling ocean stories in engaging ways to inspire a global ocean conservation ethic in the next ten years. It would be a dream to work for them after the scholarship year. I listened to the passion and success of Jean-Michel Cousteau and Fabian Cousteau as they weaved together stories of ocean resilience, restoration and recovery in the face of so many challenges.

Events like BLUE are tremendously valuable to connect with others about the biggest current issues in marine conservation. Coming together in this way, together we can help bring attention to campaigns and projects that reap huge benefits for public momentum.

I learned from Blair Palese from the Antarctic Ocean Alliance about the extremely urgent fight to protect the Ross Sea. The wild south, Ross Sea hugs the Pacific edge of the Antarctic shelf. Via pollution, destruction of habitat or exploitation of fisheries every ocean has felt the pressure of a huge human population. The Ross Sea protected by thousands of snarling miles of sea is the most pristine piece of wild ocean left on our planet. Fishing fleets are just beginning to pluck the fish from those seas and there is still a chance to preserve a place we have never even studied. There are nearly 10,000 unique species in this sea and we stand now to lose treasures we’ve never even known. Hundreds of thousands of voices have already spoken up; lend your voice now to take a stand for this far away place. Leave a legacy of wild ocean for the future!

I was inspired by the GlassIsLife campaign led by Celine Cousteau and Owens-Illinois to grow the market share of glass through a PR campaign. In a world-gone-plastic, glass is superior in almost every way. Glass is beautiful, endlessly recyclable, healthy, iconic, ocean-friendly and makes food taste better. I hope you’ll visit GlassIsLife online, on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Pinterest to find simple ways to join the movement for your health and the planet’s.

Among the world’s best story tellers and ocean lovers in the sessions, I loved all the conversation focused on how critical expanding the communication about the ocean’s wonders and its plight will be. Albert II, Prince of Monaco challenged the community to move beyond making films for the “already initiated” and engage others outside the immediate ocean community. As he said, anyone already attending this conference and in this room knows they cares about the ocean we don’t have to convince them.

BLUE was a massive networking opportunity where I made some fantastic connections for the rest of my year, and friendships that will last long beyond it. I was incredibly heartened to meet a great crew of other young scientists and filmmakers with whom I know will share many great ocean adventures in the years to come. There’s a calming sense of center and real feeling of family to know you’ve found a community that together will make big change for the ocean. Among this group are filmmaker Jon Schleyer, researcher and ocean advocate Michelle Wcisel, educator and ball of energy Katie Pofahl, and producer Rachel Butler.

I’m becoming more and more enlivened as this year goes on that my real calling is to help the world know and love our oceans. I want to be the bridge to help communicate ocean messages on a big scale, to translate science and inspire people to relook at their world leading with their guts rather than trying to snare them purely academically. It’s not a tidy job description yet, but I think my enthusiasm for communicating and ability to synthesize complex information into digestible pieces holds tremendous promise for me in this industry.

Thank you to BLUE Founder and President, Debbie Kinder who donated an all-access VIP experience for me to take part in the festival. Thank you to One World One Ocean President Chris Palmer for his inexhaustible energy introducing me throughout the week and for his no nonsense kick in the pants to charge forward after my goals. BLUE was certainly one of my keystone scholar experiences of the year so far!