It all began on the beautiful island of Oahu in Hawaii, a place where species, such as dolphins, turtles and whales still thrive. There are not many places in the world that you can just walk in off the beach and see such charismatic marine life.
Strangely though, on Oahu there is very little area that is totally protected. Not far to the east of Waikiki is Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve (below), the most popular place to snorkel on Oahu. The bay is fully protected. However, 3,000 people visit this area daily, and are having an obvious impact on the quality of the coral in the bay. (You would think that the revenue generated from the park fee and the popularity of the bay would result in further areas being designated as protected on the island, but this is still yet to occur).
The date was the 3rd September 2016. We were in Hawaii for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) conference. We were volunteering with the Nature For All campaign, reconnecting people back to nature.
Below is a photo of Danielle presenting a session on 'story telling' at the conference with a group of other Australian conservationists.
It was here we pitched the idea of taking Prince Albert II of Monaco to the Pelagos Sanctuary to meet the Italian scientist, Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, who had convinced his father, Prince Rainier III, that a large area off the coast of Monaco was worth protecting. Before protection, whales were getting caught in drift nets and were dying, so it was an important step forward for Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. It was an ambitious plan, but it was a beautiful story, so we gave it a shot and to our surprise Monaco loved the idea. They said 'when should we do it?'
All of a sudden, this passion project that we'd been slowly working on for a couple of years got serious. We had some big ideas about what we wanted to do with the film and which other stories we'd like to follow, but we only had a small amount of savings. We would need to find funding to make this all happen, so suddenly the enormity of the project became clear.
To clear our heads, the next morning we rented a car and headed to Keana Point on the west coast of Oahu in search of dolphins. If we were going to make a beautiful film we were going to need beautiful imagery.
So we pulled up to the beach and looked out to sea and to our delight spotted a pod of dolphins. Perfect, there is nothing more beautiful than dolphins so we jumped in. It was beautiful, the water was crystal clear and the dolphins were hanging around. Sadly, we noticed that one had some plastic wrapped around its pectoral flipper (below). Fortunately, one of the locals managed to free it from the dolphin which was pretty special to see.
Then, in a distance I noticed someone on the beach going through our stuff. He had picked up our towel and was walking towards our car. It was then that I realised what was going on - someone was about to steal our belongings.
I started swimming to shore shouting to Danielle that we needed to get to shore. Then, to my horror I saw him drop something, the key, it was in the towel. He grabbed it. Opened the door and drove off...
The feeling of hopelessness was overwhelming. How had I been so stupid to leave the key in the towel?
We weren't in Australia anymore.
I have travelled extensively all over the world and never been so careless. I think the excitement of seeing the dolphins had just got the better of me. I thought maybe he'd go through the car, but it never entered my mind that he'd actually take the car. So all of a sudden Danielle and I were stranded on the side of the road with no belongings, just an underwater camera.
We didn't have much in the car so it wasn't the end of the world. I was actually more upset that I wasn't still in the water. It's not everyday you get crystal clear water with a pod of dolphins and worst of all we needed this footage for the film.
It wasn't to be though. The police soon arrived and told us they had located the car and had detained a suspect. Somehow, the description I gave of a man wearing a red shirt had been enough for the police to find the guy that stole our car on the single lane road out of the area. So amazingly, we got our belongings back!
So what a week. The ups and downs were immense. Getting the prince onboard the film had changed everything but the lengths we would need to go to to make this film beautiful would constantly challenge us as a two person team: pushing ourselves to bring it together, diving and filming wherever conditions would permit, and trying to get the best shots possible.
In a few days, we would be in the Dominican Republic for a film festival, offering us another chance to get in the water and get some great footage. However, on a dive just out of Santo Domingo disaster struck and I was rushed to hospital and the whole film was thrown into jeopardy.
To be continued...