My most excellent TechKnow adventure

The TechKnow Assignment

Two weeks on a ship in the Pacific with dives on Alvin, a scientific submersible that goes to 10,000 feet below the sea. Then later, the Costa Rican rain forest to a research station on a search for creepy crawlies for Phil Torres to investigate.

The Challenge?

What to take?  How do you work out what gear you need to go on an expedition like this?  It’s a cameraman’s perpetual dilemma.  As a photographer in the old days of news-gathering, bringing gear was never a problem . You brought every thing including your coffee maker.  Could be 20 or 25 cases or more.

Today, traveling, especially by air, the rule of thumb is less is more.  Much more. Some airlines won’t allow passengers more than 4 cases each. I started to think about the production gear weeks and weeks before the proposed departure date. Cameras, lights, stands, computers - all this not so “portable” equipment needed to make TV.

New and better equipment really comes into play on these shoots. On TechKnow, the primary camera is the Canon C300. Great camera if you are using it on a dolly or tripod. But to schlep it around a moving ship and into the rain forest was going to be a killer.

JB, the other Director of Photography on our show is a great tech geek and an asset in sharing his knowledge. He had been shooting with a new camera for a few months and loves it. More bells and whistles than you can ever imagine. The lesson here is a cameramen can never have enough stuff.  It made all the difference in the world while shooting on board the ship at sea and deep in the jungle.

The Travel:

We flew down to Costa Rica and all the gear arrived, which is always a good sign. So often with connecting flights you get to your final destination with missing luggage. Then you are truly done for.

Next morning we met our head Scientist Geoff Wheat and joined his team of scientists heading for the research ship Atlantis. With a push and a shove we managed to get all of us and the gear into a mini bus headed for the coast. Geoff and I talk on the ride down, with me trying to gauge what was in store for us.  After a short time, I knew with certainty that we were in for a great adventure.

As this was Thanksgiving Day, we had plantains, rice and beans in Puente Arenas to celebrate! Finally the next morning it was anchors aweigh and we headed west for a 100 miles off the coast of Costa Rica.

For me personally, being at sea, on practically anything that floats, is the best possible place to be. I was thrilled to be there. But it was also time to get down to serious work And work we did.  We lost a dive day when the whole ship, except me, went down with a 24-hour bug. This put our shooting schedule a little behind. Weather also was also an important factor, because Alvin could only dive in good sea conditions.  We had to get Phil Torres, our TechKnow scientist, into Alvin for a dive to the sea floor as a first priority.

Watching Alvin getting readied for the first dive was quite something. A dedicated crew worked with precision; no detail was overlooked.

The Captain of Atlantis and the launch crew worked in sync for each dive, which lasted on an average of 9 hours per dive. Phil got the first crack at Alvin. He had a real successful dive, and we even did a live audio link up with an Al Jazeera America news show in NY while he was down there.

Everyday, for Kelly, our audio engineer, Phil and me, it was a fast paced effort for doing beautiful photography, conducting interviews, stand-ups, mounting Go-Pros, even getting on and off the ship into the inflatable small boat to get exterior shots of our ship Atlantis and Alvin the sub as it launched and was recovered.    

For me, after covering Phil’s experience on Alvin, I just had to get down there myself. So when Geoff Wheat came to tell me I had a dive date, my grin nearly split my face in two. I’ve had many adventures, both good and bad, in my 30 years of circling the globe in search of important stories, but this opportunity was simply the chance of a lifetime.

On my dive day, I was up by 5.30am too excited to sleep. I had breakfast and coffee, but not too much because there was no way I was going to take my coffee down 10,000 feet and an 8-hour day with no of bathroom. No way was that going to happen.

At 8am, you hear this call from the Launch coordinator "ALL ABOARD," just like a train conductor.

You slip off your shoes and climb down the narrow hatch that leads into the Sphere. Straight away you are in a very different space. Dim lighting a 6 foot diameter area where 3 of you will spend the next 9 hours. There are 3 assigned seats, one on the port, the other on starboard. The Pilot drives from the center.

You then get the command to commence the dive. For 2 hours you descend into dark water. Shortly after 2 hours, the Alvin lights are turned on and you make out the seabed.

Then you start to see things.  Sea ferns, white in contrast to black volcanic rock. They are amazing with delicate details.  Small critter swimming past, fish that look more like eels, and octopus sitting on the warm thermal vents.  We start our run to several pre designated positions on the chart that the scientists want rock samples taken from. The temperature inside the sphere is about 2 degrease Celsius. I was layered up with warm clothes and condensation is running down the sides.   All to soon for me, the radio springs to life. Atlantis is asking us to start our ascent back to the surface.

Having seen what happened to Phil after his dive, I knew what was coming next. There was no escape. All first time Alvin divers get doused with gallons of ice cold water. It’s a tradition carried out with great laughter and glee by the crowd on deck. Man, was that water cold!!!!

Aboard Atlantis

Back on the ship, I have to give an honorable mention here and a shout out to the chef.  You’ve often heard that an army marches on its stomach. It’s the same with camera crews. Feed ‘em and they will work for hours quite happily! And after science, food was the most talked about topic on the ship! Meals were at a set time and I can tell you that no one was ever late. The meals were by far the best I’ve had on the road with out a doubt.

I have been very lucky in my career and have had many life changing experiences. Some good and some not so good. This trip is up there with the greats.

I was sad to leave Atlantis, but the Costa Rican jungle story was next up. So we said goodbye to our new friends and headed inland to the dark green rain forest and another episode in adventure.