All last weekend, we had the pleasure of hosting National Geographic while they taped a new episode of their show, "Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr." Barr has a doctorate in herpetology, and most of his shows focus on getting a little "too" close to dangerous crocs, komodo dragons, and other animals with big teeth. He traveled with his crew from Maryland to tape the white sharks of Mossel Bay, breaching on seal decoys and attacking bait ropes during chum sessions. National Geographic brought specially made camera-helicopters, that hovered over the seal decoys and bait lines in order to film overhead shots of breaching and chum events. Two, incredibly nerdy young men, who obviously never grew out of their shared passion for tinker toys and video games, were in charge of flying the helicopter while wearing some sort of Star Trek glasses that was relaying the video feed. It was very entertaining to watch, especially when a real "predation" event happened mere feet from the boat and none of them were prepared to film the event, instead they all yelled and pointed. I believe that it amazed them to see nature in action, in all of it's spontaneous greatness (and without the need for a decoy). It's always very exciting to have video crews around, it allows you to just sit back and admire how truly majestic the creatures are that you work with, and hope that the general public gets to enjoy them as much as we do.
