Friday, April 2, 2010

This blog has moved


This blog is now located at http://botobulletin.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://botobulletin.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Last Day

This was the last hurrah... and it was a bit of a roller-coaster.  First, when I went in the water early today, I quickly realized that the housing was flooded.  (I lost a camera and lens last year this way)  In any case, this put an abrupt end to my underwater work, forcing me to abandon the "feeding piranhas to the botos" project (not a bad thing, I think) and to do something else.  (UPDATE : looks like the camera survived the bath...)

What ended up happening was a complete surprise - and a delight.  We went back to a location I had scouted 2 weeks ago, with huge buttressed trees rising out of the water - to my eye the perfect vision of the flooded forest.  I had bombed here several times before - no light, or no botos - but today it was perfect.  Soft overcast light (rare in this land of blazing sun) and a wealth of dolphins.  I hesitate to say it, but I nailed the one single shot I had been looking for.

Now I can go home feeling like I did what I needed to do.  It is up to the NG to see if they have what they need, but whatever happens, this has been an extraordinary experience - equal measures of hard work, boredom, fun, frustration and exhilaration.  

Thanks to all of you for coming along on the ride.  I'll let you know when/if the story gets on the NG schedule!

Love to all ; I'm heading home!

Kevin

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Piranhas

OK, the first question a lot of people ask when I say that I am swimming in the Amazon every day is this... "what about the piranhas?"  Fair enough, and the fact is the river is teeming with them.  Happily, they have plenty to eat this time of year, e.g. when the water is high.  It is during the dry season that they get stressed - and dangerous.  

Having said this, my staff was busy today catching piranhas to help me get a shot of a boto actually catching a live fish.  This involved using about 30-40 live fish and a nearly endless series of comic disasters, from fish that just swam away (and beyond the reach of my camera) before a boto could catch them,  to Wellingthon losing part of his fingertip, trying to grab one for me. 


In the end, I got a handful of modestly successful shots of dolphins with live piranhas in their jaws.  But who knows if they ever eat piranhas?  I certainly don't.  But this is my only hope of getting dolphins catching fish...  Don't be surprised if they don't make it into the magazine...

Love to all,

Kevin

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Near the end...


I have only two field days left before heading home.  This is both welcome news (I miss Marty something fierce) but also a bit daunting since I have little time left to make magic happen, and play out some lingering, untested ideas  ...  

One of my daily challenges is that I have to work around the fact that tourists are using the same location to see/feed the wild dolphins, but sometimes there are so many that it makes my work nearly impossible...  

Still, I managed to get shots of dolphins throwing wood and picking up leaves...  Doesn't sound like much, but both are natural behaviors that I am pleased to have captured.  Tossing things, in particular, seems to be part of courtship, as if throwing stuff around shows that you are strong and sexy and....?   I need to research this, but it is quite possible that no one knows enough about Botos yet to be sure what this behavior means.  

My friend and Boto Researcher, Tony Martin, has written a paper about boto "carrying" like this and it is possible that what I am seeing is related.  The fact is that there is still a lot we don't know about these animals...

OK, enough for now.  For comic relief, here is a picture of my boat driver  "Touch" (a.k.a. Toti) pretending he is a Boto.  Very funny guy despite the fact that we hardly share 3 words of vocabulary.

Love to all,

Kevin

Monday, July 21, 2008

Finally!


One of the most difficult things to arrange here has been a charter helicopter to shoot aerials of the flooded forest habitat.  Between the changeable weather and the difficulty with dealing with a company in a different city, and a different language, this has been a real headache.  It has been scheduled 3-4 times and cancelled.    Thank God for Christoph's help! (And thank C. for the photo...)

Today, however, we flew - for over an hour with the door open so I could hang out over the Rio Negro and shoot pictures of the marvelous Anavilhanas Archipelago, long strips of forested islands as far as the eye can see.  I wish I could share pictures with you - but look at Google pictures: it is one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen.  

Only three days left, meanwhile, time to fill some holes and wind this up.  I'm tired, but feel like I've done pretty well...


Love to all,

Kevin

Sunday, July 20, 2008

The Missing Fish

A few days ago I paid some local fishermen to catch - and keep alive - a few hundred small fish.  My plan was use these to try and get realistic dolphin "hunting" shots underwater.  (Getting the real thing is impossible in water with 2 foot visibility)  Good plan, I thought, although I had no idea whether I could make it work.

We even came up with a floating cage designed for keeping fish alive until we needed them.  Then, yesterday morning we checked - and found the cage inhabited by a 6-foot caiman - who was defending the few fish he hadn't already eaten...  How he got in there remains a debate - the top door was missing.  But there is even more debate about how to get him out!

Today Christoph will try and buy some more live fish...this time we'll use them right away....

Love to all,

Kevin

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Eye Level...


Yes, that's me, sitting in a chair on an underwater platform trying to get surface shots of dolphins - and that's Wellingthon holding my tripod to keep  $10K worth of camera gear ending up in the drink!  Didn't produce much, to be honest,  since it is almost impossible to predict where or when a dolphin will rise to the surface...

Love to all,

Kevin