January 10, 2011: Award-winning underwater cinematographer, Adam Ravetch works in one of the most unforgiving, hostile environments imaginable: Under the ice in the Arctic. And with camera in hand, he pursues some of the most elusive and dangerous Arctic life, including polar bears and walrus. The critically-acclaimed film, “Arctic Tale” narrated by Queen Latifah told the story of a polar bear cub and a walrus pup against the backdrop of a changing Arctic environment and showcased 15 years worth of Adam’s incredible footage and insights. Adam joins us this week to tell us how he did it, and what’s next!

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This Week: Underwater Cinematographer, Adam Ravetch

From Beneath the Ice to the Big Screen: Adventure and Discovery with Narwhals, Polar Bears, Walrus, and Camera

Marine naturalist, Arctic ice diver, and award-winning wildlife filmmaker, Adam Ravetch has been involved in film projects that has taken him to the far corners of the earth. Dedicated to creative filmmaking, he strives to bring to the screen the unforgettable  stories of marine animals.

Ravetch has become one of a handful of filmmakers to shoot beneath the Arctic ice cap. Over nearly 20 years, the unforgiving Arctic has rewarded Ravetch with some of his most fantastic moments, including his footage of polar bears predating on walrus and his close-up footage of the first moments of a newborn walrus calf with her mother.

In 1990, Ravetch teamed up with his wife, director/writer Sarah Robertson to make five Arctic films, produced by their company Arctic Bear Productions, for National Geographic and the acclaimed PBS “Nature” series. They have collected awards from around the globe including an Emmy.

Ravetch co-directed his first theatrical film for National Geographic Films and Paramount Vantage, Arctic Tale, released in 2007. Recently he filmed a one-of-a-kind behavior sequence of a walrus herd defending and beating down an attacking polar bear for the BBC’s Planet Earth Series and he is now filming a first-of-its-kind 3-D feature about polar bears.

Underwater Cinematographer, Adam Ravetch (Photo by David E. Guggenheim)

Ravetch’s career spans from the Red Sea to Micronesia but it is the Polar Sea that has captured his imagination.  Born and educated in California, Ravetch received his BS in zoology from San Diego State University. At this time SCUBA diving for Ravetch became a passion. He took every Scuba course that was offered, and later, would even give lessons to a Middle East prince. While attending California State University, Ravetch completed shark research at the Graduate School of Marine Biology. Shortly after he received the Our World Underwater Scholarship, which enabled him to travel across North America meeting and learning from the greatest minds working in marine science. Impatient with science, Ravetch became interested in the more physical job of underwater photography and wildlife filmmaking.

With a view at helping to preserve the Arctic, and Ravetch and Robertson founded The Arctic Exploration Fund, an organization that seeks to discover and film the responses of Arctic wildlife reacting to the rapid environmental changes taking place in the North.

Photo Gallery: Adam Ravetch and the Making of “Arctic Tale”

“Arctic Tale” Trailer

Get “Arctic Tale” !!

November 29, 2010: Walter Parker, who has accumulated an incredible 55 years of leadership and experience in Alaska’s environmental issues, particularly as a watchdog of Alaska’s oil industry, joins us to share his unique perspectives on Alaska’s experience with the oil industry and whether we’ve yet learned our lessons. The stakes are high: The push is on to drill beneath the ice in Arctic waters. This week we hear from many of you as we give thanks to Mother Ocean!

The Ocean Doctor airs weekly on WebTalkRadio.net. Want to listen on your iPod, iPhone or mp3 player? Download the mp3 file or subscribe on iTunes and don’t miss a single episode. See the complete list of episodes.

Submit a question and I’ll try to answer it on the air. Even better, record your question or comment on our special message line and I might play it on the air. Call: (805) 619-9194. You can also leave questions and comments for this episode below.

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Do We Dare Drill Beneath Arctic Seas?

This week's guest, Walter Parker, has over 55 years of experience watchdogging Alaska's oil industry

The push is on for offshore oil drilling in the Arctic, miles deep below Arctic waters and ice off of Alaska. But are we ready for this? What lessons have we learned from the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and from Alaska’s own history, which includes the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound, a disaster whose impact is still felt today, decades later.

This week we’re joined by Walter Parker, who has accumulated an incredible 55 years of leadership and experience in Alaska’s environmental issues, particularly as a watchdog of Alaska’s oil industry, to share his unique perspectives on Alaska’s experience with the oil industry and whether we’ve yet learned our lessons. Mr. Parker also has extensive experience in Alaska in planning and creating parks and wildlife refuges. During construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Walt was Environmental Consultant to the State Pipeline Coordinator’s Office and also Director of Technical Staff. He also served as Chairman of the State’s Oil Tanker Task Force during that period. He’s a former Research Associate in wildlife, fisheries, Law of the Sea and transportation at the University of Alaska and also the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence in regional and urban planning, public administration and political science at the University in Anchorage.

He has held State positions as Commissioner of Highways, Chairman of the Joint Federal/State Land Use Planning Commission for Alaska, Member of the Alaska Board of Fish and Game and Chairman of the  Alaska Hazardous Substance Technology Review Council. His federal appointments include several positions in the Federal Aviation Administration, Commissioner on the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and presently serving as a Delegate to the Arctic Council where he serves as Chairman of the Circumpolar Infrastructure Task Force, the Sustainable Development Working Group and the Emergency Preparation, Prevention and Response Working Group. He presently is Chair of the Prince William Sound Science Center. Walt helped found many of Alaska’s past and current environmental organizations including the Alaska Conservation Society, Trustees for Alaska, the Alaska Center for the Environment and Oil Watch. He also serves on the Advisory Board of The Ocean Foundation.

I am inside a tiny, 1-person submarine beneath the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles offshore from the Alaskan coast. There are 1,300 feet of water between me and the surface. I’m here as part of a Greenpeace-led expedition to shed new light on the unexplored depths here.

It’s freezing cold, completely dark, and forbidding — and it’s utterly beautiful.

• I’ve seen deep sea corals at nearly 2,000 feet, defiantly wearing their brilliant pink colors across a dark, brown and gray seascape; some of the corals here may be over 2,000 years old.
• I’ve seen prehistoric-looking fish patrolling the dark waters of these depths.
• I’ve seen hungry, voracious squid, rocketing toward my sub’s lights, probing my sub’s surface for something to swallow.
• I’ve seen the fine threads that hold an ecosystem together, like how tiny shrimp and other creatures, seeking sanctuary from the powerful undersea currents, eagerly gather in the depressions in the bottom left by flatfish like halibut and skates, each bearing a perfect outline of the fish that previously lay there.
• I’ve seen the current carrying countless tiny and microscopic plankton, and with my lights out, witnessed these creatures light up the darkness with hypnotic constellations yellow-green light.
• And I’ve seen the unmistakable mark of humanity’s hand, in the form of huge plowed swaths of bottom where little grows, the telltale scars of trawling for fish, here in the place where half of the U.S. fish catch comes from.

I believe there are important lessons for us down here. Lessons on how we live our lives high above and far away from this place. But they’re not just lessons about science. They’re lessons of our own humanity.

Here in this tiny sub, I’m trying to comprehend an enormous, complex tapestry in the darkness. And in the vastness, I feel small, awed by each sight around me, overwhelmed by how much we still don’t know. More than anything, I feel a strong sense of humility, my own self-importance paled against the grandeur of this place, our planet, and the knowledge to come in the centuries ahead.

Humility is perhaps one of the most important lessons from this place. It allows us to see beyond ourselves, to truly perceive the world around us with wonder. Yet it’s a quality strangely lacking from too many of our leaders today, whose arrogance short-circuits our human quest for truth, supplanting reason with rhetoric. True leadership demands the bravery to seek the truth, a curious mind to fashion a better way forward, and objectivity, to admit regrets.

I truly hope we can reawaken our unique and precious human qualities of wonder, curiosity and humility, helping our children spend less of their summers learning how to take a standardized test, and more learning how to explore the real world around them.

By the end of my dive a few hours from now, my tiny sub will have illuminated but a few new corners of this vast place. With each tantalizing glimpse come new insights and a little more of the story this ornate tapestry tells. I believe there are life lessons in countless corners of the world around us. We just need to do what humans do best: Look around and be curious.

I wrote most of this short essay while piloting the DeepWorker submersible below the Bering Sea in 2007. It was originally submitted for NPR’s “This I Believe” series and 3 years later, reprinted here.

The Ocean Doctor airs weekly on WebTalkRadio.net. Want to listen on your iPod, iPhone or mp3 player? Download the mp3 file or subscribe on iTunes and don’t miss a single episode. See the complete list of episodes.

Submit a question and I’ll try to answer it on the air. Even better, record your question or comment on our special message line and I might play it on the air. Call: (805) 619-9194. You can also leave questions and comments for this episode below.

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This Week’s Guest: John Hocevar

This week's guest: John Hocevar, Oceans Campaign Leader, Greenpeace USA

John Hocevar knew that he wanted to protect the world’s oceans from the first time he saw the beach when he was four years old. Since that time, the marine biologist has worked on a host of ocean conservation issues from protecting the habitat of endangered sea turtles in Florida to teaching marine biology and environmental science to students. John has extensive experience in coral reef conservation, and worked with Coral Cay Conservation to develop a coastal management plan for the Government of Belize. In addition to ocean conversation work, John has spent time organizing students around various environmental and social justice issues. Before coming to Greenpeace in 2004, John was the founder and executive director of Students for a Free Tibet.

Additional information: Greenpeace.org

Tip of the Week

Don’t pour hazardous liquids down the drain!! Contact your local government for instructions in your area. According to Montgomery County, Maryland: Let latex paints dry out first, then dispose of normally. Dry oil-based paints, then dispose as hazardous waste.

The Ocean Doctor airs weekly on WebTalkRadio.net. Want to listen on your iPod, iPhone or mp3 player? Download the mp3 file or subscribe on iTunes and don’t miss a single episode. See the complete list of episodes.

Submit a question and I’ll try to answer it on the air. Even better, record your question or comment on our special message line and I might play it on the air. Call: (805) 619-9194. You can also leave questions and comments for this episode below.

Like the show? Learn how to become a sponsor.

The ExpeditionCasts podcast is back! The series returns with the video version of the Ocean Doctor’s popular blog post, "Attacked by the Giant Squid’s Cousins." (You can access the video version below.) That’s big news. But the GINORMOUS news is that ExpeditionCasts returns along with a new version of Google Earth. Version 5.0 of Google Earth allows you to explore the other 70 percent of the planet — the world’s oceans — and access

stunning underwater video content from around the world. 1planet1ocean has been privileged to be a contributor to this enormous, er, GINORMOUS project, and you’ll find five ExpeditionCasts videos among the others Google Earth 5.0. Look for them in Alaska’s Bering Sea and off the northwestern coast of Cuba.

The project has been a two-year effort stemming from a chance meeting of oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle and Google’s John Hanke at a meeting of the Geographical Society of Spain. Dr. Earle pointed out, directly but politely, that Google had done a great job with Google Earth, until you entered the water, that is. Since then, a large team of collaborators was assembled and has worked to bring the other 70 percent of the planet to life in Google Earth 5.0.

Earlier today at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, former Vice President Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, John Hanke (Director, Google Earth and Maps), Dr. Sylvia Earle (Explorer-in-Residence, National Geographic Society and Founder, Deep Search Foundation) and others announced Google Earth 5.0 to the world.

We invite you to explore Google Earth 5.0. If you like ExpeditionCasts, we’ll be releasing each of the videos that are part of Google Earth 5.0 over the next few weeks, which you’ll receive automatically if you subscribe to our feed (free) below. We recommend that you subscribe for the best video quality and so you don’t miss a single episode!

Subscribe in a reader Play the Latest Episode

Leg 2 was going far too smoothly. My flight to Tampa was early. The rental car bus arrived immediately. I didn’t get lost. The sun was shining. Maybe you’re like me, but when things start going this well, I get nervous. Turns out my gut feelings were right. Things were about to get…silly.

Like the expedition’s first leg to California, Leg 2 was also to familiar territory, to a state I had once called home: Florida. My many years in Florida, teaching at Seacamp in the Florida Keys, as president of The Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples, and co-chair of the Everglades Coalition, means that I’ll be returning here twice more to honor the flood of speaking requests I was honored to receive.

I hadn’t seen Kelly Samek in several years, since she had been the organizer of the Public Interest Environmental Conference (PIEC) at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. PIEC is a remarkable event, now in its 15th year, where attorneys and other professionals from around the state and beyond gather to shed their pinstripes, roll up their sleeves, and speak with brutal honesty and fervent passion about protecting what’s most special about Florida — its incredible natural heritage. PIEC is also admired for its notable parties, some of which are reminiscent of hippie days gone by. I was honored to be keynote speaker at PIEC several years ago, but the highlight for me was meeting author, Carl Hiaason, whose acid humor has done as much to raise awareness about Florida’s treasured environment and outrageous politics as any advocacy group.

Kelly had since gone to Tallahassee and was working for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in the Office of General Counsel, working on the front lines of land use law and endless controversial issues spawned as greed and backhoes continued to collide with cypress and woodstorks against the backdrop of the largest environmental restoration ever attempted in human history: The $10 billion restoration of the Everglades. Overworked and underpaid, Kelly was as energetic and optimistic as I remembered her, still sporting her good natured sense of humor, including the delightful shark badge riding on the back of her Toyota.

We spoke by cell phone as I made my way to the teaching auditorium, which I found was still occupied 20 minutes before show time. The news from Kelly wasn’t good: "The auditorium is double-booked." Turns out she was only half correct. It was actually quadruple-booked! It had been many years, but based on the shouting, jumping and hand waving I was seeing through the crack in the doors, I was pretty sure I was witnessing a Friday evening screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. A young student approached and told me she was supposed to be screening the Hitchcock classic, Dial M for Murder in the same room. And I learned later that some sort of circus program also laid claim to the room. My watch indicated 15 mintues before 7pm, our scheduled show time. In 2007 I had given an impromptu PowerPoint presentation to fishermen at the Dutch Harbor (Alaska) Airport, holding my laptop above my head — hopefully this wouldn’t be the case again here.

My new Hitchcock friend disappeared into the darkened room to see if she could plead my case. Miraculously, I saw the fluorescent lights illuminate a few moments later, and she emerged, telling me that the Rocky Horror folks would take their performance elsewhere. And so would she. In moments, the hall was empty, with 10 minutes to spare! The circus group never arrived, but fortunately Kelly and our attendees did, a wonderful mix of Kelly’s Coastal Law and Policy and other students from New College, along with senior volunteers from nearby Mote Marine Laboratory, an organization I have worked closely with for decades, including our current work in Cuba.

I wrestled with a rat’s nest of unfamiliar wires and managed to get an image on the screen. The projector was so weak that it was necessary to kill every light to make it visible to the audience. "Actually, this is appropriate." I said, thanking the audience for their patience as the program finally started, "Most of the planet’s life lives in the oceans, and most of it lives in complete darkness." As latecomers stumbled through the aisles, feeling their way to find their seats, I launched into an hour-long presentation.

When the lights painfully came back on, I was happy to see the size of the audience had grown and no one was asleep. This was a group that knew its stuff about the oceans — the Gulf was practically within spitting distance. Students asked me questions about coastal issues, and we talked about how in Florida, land and water are inextricably linked…what happens on land ultimately expresses itself in Florida’s coastal waters. And I was delighted to speak with a student named Catie, who is deeply inspired about the oceans. I told her about the newest partner to "join" the expedition, Our World – Underwater Scholarship Society, which awards incredible scholarships to college-aged students (freshman to recent graduates) to travel the world for a year studying with the A-list of ocean experts.

Kelly and I had a chance to catch up afterwards, and here again, another of my colleagues in the environmental world, overflowing with tireless commitment and dedication, was using her vacation time to advance the cause, in this case teaching Coastal Law and Policy at New College. How lucky her students are, and how lucky all of us are that even in tough times, such a spirit endures. During my introduction, I told the Mote volunteers how much I missed the hundreds of volunteers I worked along side of at The Conservancy of Southwest Florida. As with many nonprofits, it truly would have been impossible to do anything without them. One of the attributes of the U.S. that the world marvels at is the strength of our volunteerism, and I expect that as we forge through difficult months ahead, we’ll see even more clearly just how important the strong hand and caring heart of the volunteer is to all of us.

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