About 15 minutes from arriving at my hotel, and after 36 hours of travelling from the States, I received a phone call from Hanli Prinsloo, South African freediver and founder of the I Am Water trust, and also the person that I had come to visit and learn from here in Cape Town.
“Jeff, welcome to Cape Town! How are you doing? Are you up to diving with cape fur seals today?” Of course, this warrants an obvious answer. Yes, I am always up to and ready to dive with cape fur seals.
“Great! We’re coming by to pick you up in half an hour!”
We’ve really hit the ground running here in Cape Town. My purpose for flying such a long distance was to learn more about the I Am Water trust that Hanli founded and to improve my free diving skills. I Am Water is a non-profit organization that is full of passionate ocean lovers that truly believe that mankind and nature cannot survive without each other. They do so many great things for the ocean and one of their main goals is to give the access and tools to the local people to really experience the sea. Some of the ways they accomplish this is through beach clean-ups, swim lessons, retreats, school programs among many other projects they have going on.
The added bonus to coming out here was that it timed perfectly with a film project for EpicTV. The project is to film Hanli free diving with 6 different marine animals as we work our way up the east coast to Mozambique that will make 6-5 minute episodes. Throughout my scholarship year, the video aspect has captivated my attention. I have realized how powerful and impactful a video with a good storyline can be. And I want to use the skills I’ve developed this year to tell impactful, meaningful, ocean stories through film. So I was stoked to learn that on top of the other things I came out here for, I could also further my knowledge of this artistic medium.
So far, we’ve been able to film the cape fur seals, mako and blue sharks, some amazing kelp, and sevengill sharks. We have another week and a half of diving so you’ll have to stay tuned to see what animals we finish up with!
Thank you so much to Hanli Prinsloo and Peter Marshall for inviting me out here to take part in such an awesome experience, to Emil Sergel and Jacques de Vos for allowing me to tag along and pick their brains about cameras, shots, and editing, to Steve Benjamin for taking me out on his boat to dive with the seals (his company is Animal Ocean– fantastic), to Reef Photo & Video and Nauticam USA for an awesome camera and housing to document my journey, and to the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society and Rolex for providing a year of once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
I also have to add one last shot to show the awesomeness of South Africa.
