We spent the day fishing for greenland shark. The scientist we are working with, Steven Kessel, had dropped a long line of hooks, baited with big delicious chunks of slightly rancid seal meat, the day before, and had left it there, anchored to the bottom, with a device that automatically releases a float when it is triggered remotely from above. Out we went in a small flotilla, one eighteen-foot boat piloted by Jeffrey Amarualik, our local Inuit captain, one small zodiac with a few military people from the base who were really really curious to see a greenland shark, and Scott and me with a second camera in a smaller aluminum boat with a motor that didn't exactly work correctly, stalled frequently, and had to be slightly disassembled and wrapped with an improvised starter cord to get going again. Humming the theme from Gilligan's Island.
Steven reached the point in the centre of the bay where his line had been dropped, hit the release code, and received a signal saying that the float had been deployed. But nothing came to the surface. He roamed around looking for it for a while, then he figured perhaps the line had tangled somewhat, so he enlisted us all to scan the waters for a float hovering just below the surface. We didn't find that either. So back to shore we went. The curious onlookers went home, and Steven started jury-rigging a grapple out of a variety of individual hooks and scrap metal that were lying about the shore. Back out he went to drag the bottom, trying to hook the line. I sent the cameraman and soundman back out for another try, knowing that they'd be out in an open boat on a windy lake in sub-zero temperatures for ages with a good chance of filming nothing at all. But if he did catch a shark with his little McGyver toy it was going to be awesome, so they had to go. Meanwhile Scott and I, who couldn't fit in the boat, hung out at the hotel bar for a while then decided we'd try out the steam room.
Just kidding. Hotel bars and steam rooms are not available options. Scott downloaded media in his room and I sat in a van waiting for the crew to return. But the van had a heater and a radio, up here that is the lap of luxury.
After an hour or two the adventurers returned to shore, cold, damp, and sharkless. Too bad. This is the problem with filming reality, reality doesn't arrange itself into nice neat storylines for you. That device would totally have worked in the sitcom. Steven would have wound up with the pretty corporal in camouflage fatigues, and I would have been played by Danny de Vito. That would be a much better film than mine. Drat.
Steven reached the point in the centre of the bay where his line had been dropped, hit the release code, and received a signal saying that the float had been deployed. But nothing came to the surface. He roamed around looking for it for a while, then he figured perhaps the line had tangled somewhat, so he enlisted us all to scan the waters for a float hovering just below the surface. We didn't find that either. So back to shore we went. The curious onlookers went home, and Steven started jury-rigging a grapple out of a variety of individual hooks and scrap metal that were lying about the shore. Back out he went to drag the bottom, trying to hook the line. I sent the cameraman and soundman back out for another try, knowing that they'd be out in an open boat on a windy lake in sub-zero temperatures for ages with a good chance of filming nothing at all. But if he did catch a shark with his little McGyver toy it was going to be awesome, so they had to go. Meanwhile Scott and I, who couldn't fit in the boat, hung out at the hotel bar for a while then decided we'd try out the steam room.
Just kidding. Hotel bars and steam rooms are not available options. Scott downloaded media in his room and I sat in a van waiting for the crew to return. But the van had a heater and a radio, up here that is the lap of luxury.
After an hour or two the adventurers returned to shore, cold, damp, and sharkless. Too bad. This is the problem with filming reality, reality doesn't arrange itself into nice neat storylines for you. That device would totally have worked in the sitcom. Steven would have wound up with the pretty corporal in camouflage fatigues, and I would have been played by Danny de Vito. That would be a much better film than mine. Drat.
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