THE WORLD BENEATH THE WAVES
The extraordinary RTE documentary images that show the amazing variety – and savage beauty – of life in (and under!) our seas
MAGNIFICENT humpback whales making ‘bubble nets’ to catch fish, basking sharks performing an elegant courtship ritual never before captured on film and close-ups of delicately beautiful — and until now unseen — coral gardens are just some of the highlights of RTE’s new two-part documentary Ireland’s Deep Atlantic.
We might be an island nation surrounded by water but do we know what lies beneath? Underwater cameraman Ken O’Sullivan and the crew of our state research vessel Celtic Explorer show us some of the wonders of our western ocean.
‘What we did has never been done before in Ireland,’ says O’Sullivan, of this underwater exploration. ‘I’d say people will be surprised. About 60kms out there are seven or eight species of whales and any amount of sharks. Down on the seabed we’ve got cold water coral reefs in Ireland. They are beautiful — every bit as colourful as tropical coral but more delicate because there are no big waves. There are five and possibly six academic papers coming out of the two episodes we filmed. To put that in context Blue Planet has ten times our budget and they are bragging about having three,’ he says, of David Attenborough’s award-winning series.
‘It’s the first time anybody, to my knowledge, has filmed a whale underwater in Ireland. There’s a reason why the BBC don’t come here — it’s too difficult,’ he says of the conditions.
‘I’m terrified. You have to be respectful. I’ve been doing it for ten years; I’m not a weekend warrior. But 70% of the time I encountered whales I didn’t get into the water. You really have to pick your moment. The last thing I want to do is disturb them. They can weigh up to 35 tonnes — which is the weight of six elephants.’
At one point in the filming, the barnacleencrusted tail fin of a massive humpback whale passes within a foot of his camera. O’Sullivan free dives to capture underwater footage — there’s no oxygen tank, he just holds his breath for about 40 seconds at a time. ‘The closest stuff we shot was 8-10kms offshore and we went up to 300kms out-shore — that’s how far Irish territorial waters go. What people often don’t realise is that our ocean mass is ten times the size of our land mass.’
He voyaged to the mid-Atlantic ridge with the crew of the Celtic Explorer which has a deep-water remotely operated vehicle complete with lights and robotic arms — much like that seen in the film Titanic. With this they recorded the deep ocean floor for the first time ever, getting breathtaking close-ups of that coral garden.
O’Sullivan, from Lahinch, came up with the idea for the show in 2011 and says recording the twopart programme was ‘an absolute privilege. There’s some stuff I will never see again. I filmed a blue whale — which is the holy grail — underwater in the mid-Atlantic and a group of 16 sharks doing something never seen done before.
‘You don’t get parochial about the natural world but being from Clare and seeing in front of your eyes this kind of wildlife that’s on your doorstep was just amazing. On one occasion we had a 40minute spell of the most incredible wildlife activity 40kms off the coast of Clare: thousands of seabirds, hundreds of common dolphins, seven or eight humpback whales, minke whales. We actually didn’t know where to point our cameras.’
‘The last thing I want to do is disturb a whale’