The Shark and the Albatross

by John Aitchison

  Back at the camp there are shots to download and cameras and dive gear to clean, so it’s not until late in the evening that we have a chance to watch the underwater slow-motion shot, just a rough version of it for now: the master is still waiting to be saved from its memory card. We gather round the laptop in the mess tent.

  On the screen there is nothing but dark water. The penguin enters at the bottom of the frame with its back to us and slowly rises through the exact centre of the picture, holding its flippers stiffly on either side. It is perfectly symmetrical. Decompressing air pours from the feathers on its back and its nape in a silver torrent, which swirls in the slipstream and does not diminish until long after the penguin has gone.

  Didier breaks the silence: ‘We must do more of this, no?’

  He knows it will mean sacrificing his remaining chances to dive with the penguins, but none of us realise that this second storm will keep us in camp until our last day, or that I will use the time to make a terrible mistake.

  Downloading the camera’s memory cards is a slow process. I do it methodically by sorting the cards into two piles: those still to be downloaded to the hard drive and those I have already copied, which it’s safe to erase and use again. I have already processed the shot of the penguin rising like a cross on a silver chain, in order to watch the rough version, so I put that card in the ‘done’ pile and erase it with the others, forgetting that I have not downloaded the master file first. The rough copy is not good enough to use in the series and although we try every means of recovering the lost data, the unique shot is gone for ever.

  The plane is due tomorrow and by the time it arrives the whole camp must be packed, but the storm blows on, taking with it our chance to go back to the holes for a last try. Martha kindly says that if the wind drops overnight she will take all the tents down on her own, so we spend the evening packing as much as we can. When we go to bed the wind is still shaking the tents.

  Chadden wakes us at four in the morning. It is perfectly calm. We throw everything onto the sledges and drive as far as the last iceberg. The ice beyond has not yet disappeared, so we press on to the holes. I put the camera together as quickly as I can, only to discover that in the rush I have left the monitor screen in camp. Without it I cannot frame or expose the picture. Without a word of blame Chadden goes back for it, faster on a skidoo without a sledge, but even more of our precious time has gone.

  He returns within the hour and reports that lines of penguins are making their way towards us. I wait for them with my head under the coat and an underwater view of the ice edge on the screen. I can hear them lining up beside me, a group of perhaps fifty birds, calling and getting ready to take the plunge. In a rush their feet and flippers slap the ice. They hurl themselves into the water and through the camera’s frame. I press the trigger as the last ones stream by. On the playback screen we watch them slowed down: shambling penguins becoming beautiful underwater fliers, diving away from us into the blue, going where we can never follow and dappled there by the spinning shafts of light.

  On that thin ice, half a world away from home, I have rarely been so happy.

  On my last day at McMurdo I climb Observation Hill, overlooking the base, with its workshops, its laboratories and its housing for more than 1,000 people. In the distance is one of the huts used by Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition. On top of the hill stands the large wooden cross they left behind. From beside it you can look south towards the pole and the Ross Ice Shelf, where Scott’s party died in 1912. Carved on the cross, below their names, is this line from Tennyson’s poem, ‘Ulysses’:

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  If it were possible to have heroes in the natural world, as well as in ours, mine would be the emperor penguins and that would be their motto too.

  CONCLUSION:

  MOVING PICTURES

  I spend more time away than most dads, but sometimes I have longer spells at home. During one of these my son, Rowan, and I head off in the morning to look for otters. He is keen to take photographs but we both know how wary otters can be. We have never been close enough before. I would like to show him that taking time to look properly is among the most important things I have ever learned, whether you come home with any pictures or not.

  Today is a perfect morning for spotting otters: there is no wind and we can see the silver wakes of a mother and cub fishing offshore. The sound of them munching their catch carries clearly across the still water. In time they swim towards us and climb onto a weed-covered rock, to rest and groom each other. We watch as they curl up together to sleep. This is Rowan’s chance to go closer. He spends fifteen minutes creeping forward, crouching silently when the otters stir, then he lies in the water to wait. Both otters are fast asleep but their legs and whiskers twitch: they are dreaming. Although the water is cold Rowan doesn’t stir until the rising tide rouses the cub, which wakes its mother by lying on her head. As they look around and stretch, Rowan photographs them, but despite the cold he doesn’t wade back to me, beaming, until they have swum away, and I am most proud of him for that.

  This is why the natural world matters: if not for the joy and the responsibility learned by sharing a moment in the lives of two otters, then for the fascination of watching birds in a park or a butterfly sipping nectar from a flower. Wildlife films should inspire us to experience nature for ourselves, but when that’s impossible, when animals live far away or even when they’ve died before we were born, their images can merge with our memories and make us feel that we’ve met them.

  In 2014 I went to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, to see a pigeon named Martha. She had been dead for exactly 100 years. She was the last of her kind, the passenger pigeon, which was once the most abundant bird in North America and perhaps in the world. Meeting her was a profound moment: I would love to have filmed the pigeons’ immense flocks darkening America’s skies, or one of their colonies where billions nested, but extinction is for ever and during my travels I have seen it looming for more and more animals.

  I missed the chance to film passenger pigeons by a few generations: my grandmother was born just before Martha died, which shrinks the century for me. There were not many photographers in 1914, so only a handful of images show the last passenger pigeon alive, and there are no moving pictures of her at all, yet looking at those grainy black and white photographs is more poignant than seeing her preserved remains.

  Photography has come a long way since it recorded Martha’s last days. The images we can produce now are more vivid and detailed than ever before but the greatest change is very recent and has less to do with cameras than with the technology for putting new pictures in front of us every day. Masses of them now compete for our attention and the ones we notice are those telling the most engaging stories.

  That is what wildlife films must do if they are going to make a difference, if they are going to help the next passenger pigeon. Stories told well through moving pictures can bring to life animals we’ve never met, including those in trouble, such as wandering albatrosses or Adélie penguins, and those with inspiring stories of recovery, like the peregrine falcon and Antarctic fur seal. As long as your children and mine watch them and feel lucky to live in such a fascinating world, they are on the path towards protecting wild animals and their homes. Compelling films can make us care that we stand to lose, not just the most attractive and appealing species, but the whole complex, beautiful spectacle of nature.

  In the most important sense of the word, moving is exactly what our pictures ought to be, and if they are, perhaps more of us will choose to be on nature’s side.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  People sometimes ask whether wildlife or photography came to me first and the answer is that they arrived together. I owe my interest in wild animals to my mother, who often took my sister and me on nature walks, after which we would make things from whatever we had found in the woods and fields, as she had as a child. My father, an engineer, loves cameras. He built
my first one from a biscuit tin and showed me how to process the pictures. I am very grateful to them both for their unfailing patience as they ferried me between nature reserves, and for the help they gave me when the pennies I’d saved in a jam jar didn’t quite stretch to the price of my first binoculars. Combining these interests became a reality thanks to Martin Baggs, a family friend who let me tag along when he went out photographing birds and looked at my first efforts with a sympathetic eye. My biology teacher Nik Knight encouraged me too.

  In common with almost every wildlife filmmaker, it was the incomparable David Attenborough who made me realise there might be a career in this, when I watched him on television one day, lifting a leaf to reveal the existence of white tent-making bats. With animals like that in the world who could dream of doing anything other than filming them?

  The late Jeffery Boswell gave me my first job in the RSPB Film Unit and encouraged me to write, as well as to make films, as did Derek Niemann. Richard Brock did the same at the BBC, followed by Peter Jones, and John Sparks, Neil Nightingale and Mike Gunton, while they were editors of the Natural World series. Sarah Blunt, an outstanding radio producer in the BBC’s Natural History Unit, turned some of my filming stories into programmes for Radio 4 and has done more than anyone to keep me writing. Thank you, Sarah.

  Wildlife films are made by teams of people, some of whom have appeared in these pages. I have shared filming trips with many more and feel enormously privileged to have done so. They are the most interesting, motivated and generous people around.

  In no particular order, but connected to the filming trips described in this book, I am especially grateful to: Alastair Fothergill, Vanessa Berlowitz, Miles Barton, Adam Chapman, Andrew Murray, Mark Linfield, Huw Cordey, Mark Brownlow, Fredi Devas, Matt Swarbrick, Chadden Hunter, Jeff Wilson, Jason Roberts, Steinar Aksnes, Captain Bjørne Kvernmo and the crew of the Havsel, Ted Giffords, Mateo Willis, Jérôme and Dion Poncet, Cathy, Céline and the rest of the crew of the Golden Fleece, Ian McCarthy, Mark van de Weg of the yacht Jonathan, who lost his dinghy to the walrus, Doug Anderson, Doug Allan, Chris Watson, Kathryn Jeffs, Elizabeth White, Justin Maquire, Nathan Budd, Kathy Kasic, Bob Landis, John Shier, Tony and Kim Chater, Georgina Strange of the New Island Conservation Trust, Didier Noirot, Richard Wollocombe, Doug Perrine, Ellen Husain, Mandi Stark, Phil Chapman, Hannah Boot, Echo and the team in China, Digpal Singh, Ramjas Gupta, Toby Sinclair, Emily Winks, Andrew Yarme, Louis the eider farmer, Lance Goodwin, Peter and Thomas Joe, Paul Thompson, Matt Wilson, David Baillie, Jess Farrer, Steve Lewis, Tom Crowley, Jimmer and Alyssa McDonald.

  Behind the scenes there are the production managers, production coordinators and researchers who organise filming trips for lucky people like me. They rarely go to exciting locations and they are often overlooked. Thank you all. Neither the filming nor this book would have been possible without you.

  Thanks too to Linda Bakken, who allowed me to quote from her blog about Svalbard, Christopher Milensky in the Birds Division of the Smithsonian Institution, who showed me Martha, to Rick McIntyre and Laurie Lyman, who revealed the lives of Yellowstone’s wolves, and Christopher Nadareski of the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, who works so tirelessly to help the city’s peregrines, as does Barbara Saunders of the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation, who updated me on the fledglings’ stories. Jim Harris and Sara Gavney Moore of the International Crane Foundation, Richard Phillips and Andy Wood of the British Antarctic Survey and Cleo Small of BirdLife International, all kindly provided information for the updates.

  Among the many organisations that made the filming possible, the British Antarctic Survey was outstanding, with its scientists on Bird Island including Derren Fox and Ewan Edwards, who made our stay in the sub-Antarctic such a pleasure. The National Science Foundation and the US Antarctic Program were also excellent, as were their personnel, including Dylan, Steve, Leah, Martha and Lexie, who kept us safe on the sea ice at Cape Washington. Thanks too to the US National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, New York City’s MTA, the governor of Svalbard, Jiangxi Forestry Department in China and the Ministry of Environment and Forests in India, which all gave permission to film in the special places they look after.

  Jane Smith, Dinah Mackay, Jon Close and my wife, Mary-Lou, all kindly read my early drafts and contributed many helpful suggestions, as did my excellent agent, Alex Christofi, and skilful copy-editor, Trevor Horwood, later on. Ailish Heneberry, Julian Hector, Albert DePetrillo and Jane Hamlin all helped make it possible to include the stories in this book. I am grateful to the many friends who have allowed me to use their photographs and to my daughter Freya, whose artwork graces the maps.

  As a novice book writer I have been very fortunate to have John Davey as my editor. Not only did he ask me to write the book in the first place, but he has guided me through the process with great kindness and humour. Any errors in the text are my own.

  Penny Daniel and the lovely team at Profile have all been excellent.

  When I was starting out, wildlife cameraman Hugh Miles was a great inspiration, not only with his beautiful films but also for his sensitive approach towards animals. So were the many conservationists, such as Aldo Leopold and Tom Cade, who have ensured that there are still wild animals left to film and wild places for them to call home.

  None of my work would be possible without the love and support of my children and especially Mary-Lou, who makes films too and understands more than most why it is so important to go and how much I wish I could stay.

  Films can spark an interest, but the real work is done by the many individuals and conservation organisations dedicated to protecting wild places and wild animals. Here is how to contact a few of them; they all do great work and deserve our support:

  The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) – www.rspb.org.uk

  BirdLife International – www.birdlife.org

  The UK’s Wildlife Trusts – www.wildlifetrusts.org

  The World Land Trust – www.worldlandtrust.org

  The National Audubon Society – www.audubon.org

  The Sierra Club – www.sierraclub.org

  The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – www.worldwildlife.org

  The Peregrine Fund – www.peregrinefund.org

  Panthera – www.panthera.org

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Gentoo penguins and sea lion, Falkland Islands. Photo courtesy of BBC

  2. Emperor penguin chicks, Antarctica

  3. Chinstrap penguins, Antarctic peninsula

  4. Adélie penguins, close to the Antarctic Circle

  5. Canvas hide, Svalbard

  6. Hut, Svalbard

  7. Filming boat, Svalbard

  8. Emperors and equipment heap, Antarctica (photo: Chadden Hunter)

  9. Waterfalls, Nordaustlandet, Svalbard

  10. Bear swimming, Nordaustlandet, Svalbard (photo: Jason Roberts)

  11. Wolf hunt, Yellowstone National Park, USA

  12. Shearwaters, Aleutian Islands, Alaska

  13. Tiger, Bandhavgarh National Park, India (photo: Mike Gunton/John Aitchison)

  14. Tiger tourism, Bandhavgarh National Park, India (photo: Emily Winks/John Aitchison)

  15. Eider duck, Svalbard

  16. Polar bear family, Svalbard (photo: Jason Roberts)

  17. Male polar bear, Svalbard (photo: Jason Roberts)

  18. Lynx, Yukon Territory, Canada (photo: Adam Chapman)

  19. Crane feather, Poyang Lake, China

  20. Improvised metal hide (metal fort), Bird Island, South Atlantic (photo: Miles Barton)

  21. The pier in seal season, Bird Island, South Atlantic (photo: Miles Barton)

  22. Wandering albatross courting display, Bird Island, South Atlantic

  23. Peregrine falcon, New York, USA (photo: Paul Thompson)

  24. Booby on camera, French Frigate Shoals, Pacific Ocean

  25. Otters, Argyll, Scotland (photo: Rowan Aitchison)

  All photograph
s author’s own unless otherwise stated.

  INDEX

  Page references for maps are in italics

  References for plates denoted by Pl.

  A

  Adélie penguins 52, 191, 192, 194, 195–6, 198–203, Pl. 4

  Aksnes, Steinar 11, 15–16, 92, Pl. 6

  Arctic terns 20, 27

  eider ducks 136, 137, 140

  polar bears 17–24, 92, 95, 96–7, 102, 104, 141–2

  walruses 97–8

  Akutan 151–2

  Alaska 13–14, 85

  Aleutian Islands 144, 145–57

  lynx 131

  peregrine falcons 51

  polar bears 25

  albatrosses

  black-footed 1–4, 165

  grey-headed 169–170

  Wandering 158, 160–81, 193, 226, Pl. 22

  Albatross Taskforce 180–81

  Aleutian Islands 144, 145–57

  Amundsen, Roald 214, 215

  Andrée, Salomon August 14, 98, 101

  Antarctic fur seals 159, 161, 162–4, 170, 171–4, 175, Pl. 20, Pl. 21

  Antarctica

  Cape Washington 204, 205–23

  Dream Island 192, 193–203

  Fish Islands 197

  Happy Camper 214–15, 216

  McMurdo Station 205–6, 218, 223

  Arctic

  snow geese 108, 109, 110–11, 119

  Svalbard 5, 6, 7–27, 90, 91–107, 132, 133–43

  Arctic charr 22

  Arctic foxes 20–21, 93, 101, 105

  Arctic terns 18, 19–21, 96, 135

  Aristotle 84

  auks 15

  B

  Bakken, Linda 18–27

  Bandhavgarh National Park 60, 61–8, 69–74, 75, 76, Pl. 13, Pl. 14

  bar-tailed godwits 85