Film stars

The beauty of running a dive centre is that we become the first port of call for the ‘odd projects’ that come along.  Over the years this has varied between organising dive conferences, running evening snorkel safaris, recovering plankton data recorders, surveying scallops, razor shells and caves, and every so often some film work. A while ago I worked with a German film presenter whose task was to catch and cook some scallops.  Part of the director’s vision was that the poor presenter didn’t know the plan until she arrived on the shoot.  This is a European programme so she’s seen Belgian chocolate factories, Swiss cheese makers and now she was headed for the bottom of the Manx sea bed. 

In situations like this your Instructor Sense starts tingling as bad as Peter Parker’s Spidersense ever did.  How much diving has she done? Has she dived in cold water before?  Has she used a dry suit before?  Has she ever used a full face mask and comms?  The director shrugged the questions off with an air of nonchalance that only a non-diver could maintain.  Would it be alright if they flew in on the Saturday morning, did the filming and flew out in the evening?  Involuntarily my hand flew up to smack my own forehead as I briefly lost my air of professionalism.  Cue a lengthy discussion about sea conditions, weather, familiarisation with new kit and skills, risks of DCI and flights. Oh and the scallops in question being out of season at the time they wanted to film, making us liable to a fine of £50,000!

The Director of Fisheries was duly contacted and issued a special permit for us to collect and retain enough scallops for the filming.  The TV director was persuaded that a three or four day filming period was needed to be able to teach his presenter the necessary skills, safety divers were lined up and we started anxiously watching the weather.  I read somewhere the other day that many teenagers wake up and check their Facebook profile before getting out of bed, brushing their teeth, using the toilet or anything else.  I’d like to think I’d never be that bad, but I’ve realised lately that I can find the weather apps on my iPhone before I’ve really opened my eyes in the morning.  I’ve become a compulsive forecast watcher.  And as filming days approached the weather was looking less and less favourable.

We took the executive decision to go and catch our scallops early and store them so that we would at least be able to ‘seed’ a sheltered bay if the weather really turned bad.  As the scallop season had closed in June we hadn’t bothered going near our favourite scallop spot over the summer.  We dropped down in anticipation and were stunned by the state of the seabed.  Port St Mary Ledges are a series of limestone gullies running out from the shore.  Although the dredgers run up and down the sand at around 30m, they never usually come into the rock ledges – but that must have changed last year.  If we’d sunk a tractor and ploughed the seabed it couldn’t have been any worse.  The deep gouges through the rock and sandy gullies had cleared every bit of life; the hydroids, dead man’s fingers and sponges had all been ripped away. And there were no scallops at all.  Luckily our back up plan for a slightly deeper, more tidal site came through and we collected our scallops for the shoot.
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The shooting days were long and repetitive.  The weather was as bad as predicted and the visibility was poor.  Our safety divers ‘seeded’ the seabed from the bottom of the shot line.  Never before has a skipper so confidently said “Head North and you’ll find the scallop bed.”  But our presenter wasn’t happy.  The overwhelming amount of new skills and new kit, the demands from the director and film crew and challenging surface and underwater conditions tipped her over the edge.  For a couple of hours she sulked in the cabin next to the heater, declaring that she had never been so cold and miserable in her life.  Never underestimate the power of divers to ‘make things happen’.  We dressed our male dive intern in the female presenter’s drysuit, gloves, mask and hood, dropped off the back of the boat and went and did some more filming anyway.  The dive brief was short and sweet and mainly consisted of reminding him “Don’t look into the camera” repeatedly!