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Importance of Poseidon Rebreathers in the Documentary Sharks of the Mediterranean

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Importance of Poseidon Rebreathers in the Documentary, Sharks of the Mediterranean

By Stéphane Granzotto

 

Sharks of the Mediterranean is a 52 minutes documentary for French TV. Translated in English, this film is available in many countries all over the world and has won many prestigious awards in many underwater film festivals.

This documentary is about the sharks of the Mediterranean sea. This little and wonderful sea between Europe and Africa is well known as a touristic place, but people ignore that it's a fantastic place to dive and observe many species of sharks. Actually, it would be more correct to say that in the past tense: it "was" a wonderful place for sharks! Now it's one of the worst places for sharks in the world. Many species are in critical danger there, because of intensive fishery and pollution. More than 50 species of sharks are living in this part of the world, and many of them are threatened by human activities!

We decided to explore this sea trying to meet and dive with fantastic species such as blue sharks, grist sharks (Hexanchus griseus) and of course the great white shark!

People ignore the presence of the white shark near the french or italian riviera, but the biggest white shark ever captured in the world was captured in the Mediterranean sea!!!  During the preparation of the film, François and I researched this history and we found a very interesting text from beginning of 19th century by a French biologist who describes what he observed in 1850 on the French coast near Nice and Marseille: "millions of sardines are hunted by thousands of tuna, and the tuna come so close to the shore to catch the sardines that sometimes they come to the beaches. Behind the tuna, in this unbelievable hunting scene, come the great white sharks, many many sharks." What we have more recently named the "sardine run", as the South African phenomenon, took place first in the Mediterranean sea 165 years ago!

Now in the Mediterranean, the great white sharks are very few, although still enormous in size, but so rare that we decided to come and film them in Guadalupe Island. There,120 great white sharks are living near this Island, which is a biosphere reserve for the past 50 years. That's why great white sharks are found in large numbers there: it's a marine reserve, a sanctuary, where they can find food and tranquility.

We travelled from Paris to San Diego by plane, and then we took a diving boat from San Diego California to Guadalupe Island, Mexico. It's a very long trip, and we were carrying a lot of video equipment, diving gear, and safety gear (required by the company insuring the production). This was all because we wanted to dive with white sharks outside of the cage! It was difficult to obtain all of the authorization to film outside of the cage, but we managed and it paid off.

We stayed 10 days on a liveaboard in Guadalupe. Day after day, we learned from the shark behavior, we observed them, waiting for good conditions. We were looking for a very big animal, and quiet, calm and tolerant water conditions.

 

Importance of Poseidon Rebreathers for this project:

Because we needed to get very close to the sharks and be able to stay underwater for a long enough time to film the sharks the best way, open circuit was not efficient at all - it is too noisy and too frightening for the white shark, and our time underwater was very limited. So we decided to dive CCR with Poseidon Rebreathers. We chose Poseidon Rebreathers because we were looking for the best machine possible: efficient, easy and safe.

With the Poseidon Rebreather, we experienced one of the most impressive dive we made, with this big female (5 meters). It stayed two days with us, and we did all the sequence with her! Thanks to our rebreather, the shark wasn't affraid of us. It was so silent, so quiet, so strong!

 

Film Crew from clips and images:

François Sarano : Oceanographer, director on Calypso for Commandant Cousteau expeditions during 13 years, co-author of "Oceans" documentary from Jacques Perrin.

René Heuzey : professional diver and underwater cinematographer. 

Aldo Ferruci : professional diver, CCR master diver. Prepared the Poseidon Rebreathers for the crew and was in charge of safety for the white shark sequences.

Stephane Granzotto : Director, Cinematographer, photographer, and Poseidon Rebreather diver.


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