Dive Into Your Imagination

Bottlenose dolphins taught me so much about life, my cameras and the ocean. Nine years ago I sold my car and bought my underwater video camera housing and went to work on a live aboard dive boat, Peter Hughes Wave Dancer in Belize. It took me three months before I was comfortable enough working on the boat to pull out my video system and use it because I did not want to flood it and I had never shot video before in my life. There was not a lot of published material on how to shoot underwater video, so it was a lot of trial and error. In January 2000 I had the greatest gift underwater when I dived with wild bottlenose dolphins for the first time in my life at Lighthouse Reef in Belize.

For two months every week a pair of mating bottlenose dolphins graced us with their presence. I worked on the Belize Wave Dancer as hostess and filled in as photopro and taught myself video. Every week when the dolphins came around, I hoped it was my time to enter into the water to dive as we had to take turns on deck and in the water. I truly believe that the dolphins got to know us on the boat and used us as foreplay between one another for sometimes they were really frisky and would tease one another by swimming through us and other times they would go into their mating rituals right in front of us.

Female bottlenose dolphins start mating between the age of 5 and 8 while males need more practice and usually start somewhere between 8 and 12 years old. The males give the females gifts of dead pieces of coral and sargassum in order to win their attention and affection. When the female is satisfied she will swim towards the surface and lie belly up. The male then has to take his tail fin and flip her over to mate. During the time we spent with the dolphins I was able to be present to amazing rituals. The footage you see of the dolphins in the sand was unbelievable as I was literally right next to them with a wide-angle lens on my camera. During this experience, I was convinced I belonged underwater to document these experiences to share with others.

I believe diving with the dolphins in Belize during January and February 2000 was some of the best memories I have in my life. On a personal level I had just chosen to leave corporate America and enter into a world that I would be making less than a tenth of the salary I had made the year before and everyone thought I was crazy. This video gives just one insight into what I have experienced during the course of the past nine years of my life.

During this time, I would shoot the dolphins with my red filter on, off, auto focus, manual focus. They were my teachers and I was their student. One of the guests on board, Vicky, went home to Texas and researched Bottlenose Dolphin behavior for me and sent me about 200 pages that I was able to print out and study so I knew what I would be filming. So from the beginning of my film experience I knew research went hand in hand with filming and editing because I could not share hours and hours of tape.

I still have the first tapes I ever shot of these dolphins from my TRV900 camera and my gates housing. I used Light and Motion lights. I filmed with and without the lights. These dolphins taught me the principals of shooting underwater video and I have shared my techniques with thousands of divers world wide because from the very first moment of me being underwater with these animals, I knew there was magic.

At this time, I was 31 years old, living in crew quarters with five other people, sharing one bathroom. Our cabins were so small we only fit sideways in them. I can tell stories about crew quarters and remember almost every single one of the passengers I dived with, but I will never in my entire life forget these dolphins of Belize. Because I learned their behavior, I was able to dive with dolphins in Papua New Guinea and capture wild spinner dolphins too.

The John G. Shedd Aquarium gave me my imagination of life below the sea when I was a child and my mission to share the ocean with others is imperative as I want our next generation not to only dream of outer space, but to experience the inner space gained only from breathing underwater.

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