Our World – Underwater Scholarship Society in North America

When watching underwater films it’s easy to be swept up into the amazing beauty of the images on the screen. I am not sure I ever fully appreciated the expertise of the world’s best professionals whose craft and skill bring us these images. Truth is, every bit of it is way harder than it looks! Compose the shot. Pick your shot. Buoyancy with your camera. Cooperative subject. Buoyancy with your camera. Lighting or no. Buoyancy with your camera. Correct light. Holding still while swimming. Shoot, shoot, change!  I’m excited to start watching TV with the sound off simply to watch the masters at work. Yet, everyone has to start somewhere.

The last several days I’ve been learning to shoot underwater video hosted by cinematographer and Women’s Diver Hall of Fame inductee Annie Crawley. Annie has great energy and a huge variety of experience. As I’m completely green to shooting video, we had so much to talk about! The Pacific Northwest is an amazingly beautiful area and warm sunshine with great sunsets made for a perfect start to my 25th year. Thank you to Annie and Terry Keffler for taking me out for a delicious birthday dinner. A huge thank you from this experience goes to Underwater Sports Seattle  for supporting my diving. Their excellent staff gave me a fantastic drysuit refresher for my new TLS 350 suit from DUI. I enjoyed bobbing around in the Underwater Sports pool learning with my camera and getting the hang of all my new Aqualung gear. If you’re ever in the Pacific Northwest, you must get out for a dive with Underwater Sports and meet all the helpful folks working at any of their six locations.

This trip was also my reunion with cold water! After a three year break in Hawaii, I was excited to be back in the Puget Sound where I had trained for many of my certifications. The dive community of Edmonds, Washington has built the Bruce Higgins Underwater Park. a grid of led-lines and sunken features which draws divers from all around the country. The site is huge with tons to discover and its long history makes it home to tons of marine life. There are huge Pacific anemones, bundles of tube worms, lingcod hiding in eelgrass beds and huge bug-eyed cabazon fish guarding broods of eggs. I met the park’s namesake Mr. Bruce Higgins down at the dive site and got to learn more about how divers (all volunteers) have safely moved huge metal beams and concrete features throughout the park. I wish I had the dive time to explore the whole park. Thank you to Fourth Element for keeping me completely cozy in the 51 degree water layered in my Arctic and Endotherm undergarments. I was really happy that my body temperature was not even on my mind as I worked to master the video housing.  The unseasonably warm weather has caused an algae bloom in the Sound bringing diving visibility down to 2 or 3 feet. Not to be deterred, poor visibility just reinforced the number one rule of shooting video- get closer! When you think you’re close, get closer. Then get closer again!

In addition to shooting in the field Annie ran a tips and theory session on video basics as well as shared experiences from her own development and business creation. Her company Dive Into Your Imagination, is creating educational guides for K-3 teachers and classrooms promoting ocean literacy in our next generation.  This work struck close to home for me, as it was my first grade teacher whose inspired teaching sparked my ocean interest. All these years later I can specifically thank Mrs. Teri Doell for putting me on the path that brought me to this career and to the OW-USS Scholarship. It’s my hope that every kid around the nation would have the wonder of the ocean and a set of these materials in their classroom. I am definitely going to make sure my 1st grade stomping grounds, Pioneer Elementary, gets a copy!

I learned so much this trip and perhaps most importantly recognized the amount of talent and practice it takes to be one of the best.  I’m looking forward to shooting on new projects, building skills and learn LOTS from hosts and experiences. Thanks for joining me on this 2012 North American Rolex Scholar adventure! I would love to hear from you on Facebook or follow me on Twitter @MeganCook33 or comment of the blogs below. Best fishes and happy bubbling!

Here’s my very first underwater video!  Please disregard that there’s no sound. This early in the scholarship year I’m still working out some software availability issues.

If you have been following this blog through my year-long journey then you have probably seen a pattern emerging– cave diving!  I fell in love with cave diving on my very first dive with Jill Heinerth in Ginnie Springs and have since made it a point to visit Jill in North Florida as often as possible!

After saying my goodbyes to the Amazon I headed straight to High Springs. This visit turned out to be a week full of diving with people I have spent years reading about!  The plan was to hang out with National Geographic Explorer Kenny Broad for a few days of cave diving while staying with Terri Skiles–nothing too crazy.  By the end of the week I had hung out or gone diving with Jill Heinerth, Kenny Broad, Tom Morris, Mark Long, Bill Stone, and the US Deep Caving Team!  Needless to say, I was a little blown away!

Once again, sorry there aren’t any underwater pictures from the caves but I still haven’t taken a camera in with me yet!

If you noticed in some of those pictures, the spring levels in some places are extremely low!  Falmouth Springs is considered a magnitude 1 spring and it no longer flows.  I have always had an interest in water and water use but after falling in love with caves and underground rivers my interest has grown tremendously.  Please check out Jill Heinerth’s newest project “We Are Water” if you have any interests in water, freshwater or saltwater!  The website for the project is www.WeAreWaterProject.com and you can show your support for the project via the fundraising platform www.IndieGoGo.com/WeAreWater.

While I was able to get out in the field a fair amount during my time in Brazil, I also spent a lot of time in the lab learning about molecular and genetic techniques that are hugely important in research (an area that I was lacking).  Most days were spent learning from all of the students at the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) in the Laboratory of Ecophysiology and Molecular Evolution (LEEM).

Dr. Adalberto Val and Drs. Vera Val (Directors of LEEM) were kind enough to guide me through my stay while connecting me with Portuguese/English speaking students who were able to explain the various research projects being conducted at the lab.  The laboratory space was extremely well set-up and the number of students under their supervision rivaled any lab I have ever come across. It was truly mind blowing.  All of the research being carried out in the lab is related to Amazonian fishes and aquatic species that are hugely important to the region both ecologically and economically.  The work they are doing is extremely important in understanding how human impacts affect the animals in the aquatic ecosystem.

Throughout my stay I was amazed at how much work is going on in Amazonas and how many unique research topics are being addressed.  If anyone out there is interested in working in the Amazon, check out INPA and the endless opportunities available associated with aquatic and terrestrial research.  I hope you enjoy the pics!

I thought I knew a little bit about fishing…until I went out in the Amazon!  The Amazon is full of fish and it turns out it isn’t that hard to catch them, as long as you aren’t targeting a specific species…that’s a little bit tougher.

During my stay in Brazil I had the opportunity to go out to a small floating fishing community just passed the “Meeting of the Waters”, in Catala?, to help a grad student from INPA (National Institute of Amazonia Research) with her fish community research.  The technique for collecting was described to me as a mix of throw netting and seine netting but once out in the field I was blown away by the difference in what I had been envisioning and the actual practice.  When the fishermen started dropping a net around a grouping of floating plants and paddling into the tangling mess, I thought “let’s see how they pull this off…”.  Just a few minutes later I was standing on the small canoe amazed as they had easily pulled the net in without any hookups and loaded one of our bins with fish!  The process was repeated over and over and every time with the same success .It was pretty awesome watching how fluid and easy it all seemed to the fishermen!

I hope you enjoy the pictures!

I have been in the Amazon for a little over two weeks now. Time is flying by!  I am based out of Manaus and am working/studying at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas do Amazonas (the National Institute of Amazonian Research).  I have had the chance to meet all kinds of awesome researchers ranging from fish biologists to cultural anthropologists and the one thing that amazes me…is how much research is being done in the region.  Unfortunately, I am here at the wrong time of year for constant fieldwork, as Carnival is starting, but I have been able to get out on some pretty cool adventures so far.  I hope you enjoy the pictures!

My first experience on the Amazon was heading out to a small fishing village. The trip started out of a fishing port in Manaus on the Rio Negro and crossed over the Solimoes (“Where the Waters Meet”) to the fishing village about an hour down the river.  It was pretty amazing to see the two rivers collide with the black and white water running along each other without mixing (pics of the meeting of the waters are coming soon, I couldn’t stop filming on this trip).

Above are pictures from my time spent in the Preserva Duke, exploring the primary growth forest outside of the city in the attempt to collect frogs.  Unfortunately in all of our attempts, we weren’t been able to find a single target species.

Check out the pics from a few days spent up the Rio Negro in a jungle/river camp exploring the flooded forests!

I never thought I would do my NAUI ITC in the chilly, murky waters of New England but that’s exactly where I found myself in November! Luckily, the weather was nice and the added bit of environmental stress and difficulty really helped me as I worked towards my NAUI instructor certification.

However, what I thought was going to be ten days of classroom, pool, and open water demonstrations turned into an incredible trip filled with awesome food, friends, and experiences.  My hosts, Vin and Dee Malkoski, made sure that my time in New England wasn’t only spent studying my NAUI materials…they even took me to Plymouth Rock and taught me how to cook scallops!

After ten days of long hours put in by myself, Vin, and my other ITC instructors I finally accomplished my goal as my NAUI ITC course culminated at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute!  What a place to finish!!!

I’ve only been back from South Africa for a couple of days and I’m already on my way to the airport for a month in the Brazilian Amazon! Stay tuned for updates from Manaus as I spend my time in the field studying piranhas!

My first chance to actually dive in South Africa outside of a cage came just a day after leaving Marine Dynamics!  After leaving Gansbaai I set out to meet up with Steven Benjamin of Animal Ocean for a couple of days in the water and under the surface.  Steve was nice enough to let me stay at his house and was determined to get me in the water no matter what!

He succeeded–  I spent my next few days diving with Cape Fur Seals, Sevengill Cow Sharks, and an American shipwreck the Bos 400.  Steve definitely made my first impression of South African diving a good one.  Next time I will plan more time!  A short video of my dives to come!  Now off to Durban!

I’ve been in South Africa for a few weeks and I love it here!  My first stop upon arriving was Gansbaai/Kleinbaai to visit the people of Marine Dynamics and the Dyer Island Conservation Trust.  Having put white sharks on the top of my priority list I was pretty excited to finally see one for myself.

In total I spent just under two weeks with Marine Dynamics and was out on their shark cage diving boat, Slashfin, almost everyday!  I learned a lot about white sharks and all of the projects associated with the Dyer Island Conservation Trust during my stay.  It’s an amazing organization and one that can use as many volunteers as possible, check them out at www.dict.org.za.

My time in Kleinbaai was an awesome experience and one I will never forget!

After finishing my research cruise to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands I quickly found myself on a flight to Kailua-Kona on the Big Island to help out on a National Geographic TV shoot!  The project was a huge NatGeo production exploring the Big Island from the top of the volcanoes all the way to the deep sea and was shot completely in 3D.  I had a blast being around large 3D cameras for the first time and getting to know Evan Kovacs (amazing underwater 3D filmmaker) of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory.  I even got to meet and hang out with the famed underwater explorer Bob Ballard!  All in all it was a great experience working with old friends and new friends.