Blue Water, White Death

We in this fragile world of ours should do whatever is necessary to educate, everyone, children, parents, etc. We must at all costs, not eliminate these great sharks, that have been put into the oceans for many ions. If we out of ignorance, or greed, destroy these magnificent animals, we will regret our actions. For once they are gone forever, the balance in our oceans will create havoc. No more predators to control the all the seal families: Example: (sea animals with flippers.) Once we create an imbalance such as this, we will not survive as the human race. Beside Blue Water, White Death, there have been many other documentaries on this subject, if we choose not to learn from the past, we will have no future.

Ahoy... I was in Wood's Hole, MA this weekend and was fortunate to be at the screening of this flick in HD. It is an interesting film, with many memorable moments and beautiful ( and sometimes horrifying ) photography and images. The film standing alone is passable, and seems campy within our current cultural frame of reference. However, watching in context, you realize this was the ancestor to many of those glossy animal shows we all love. In general, shoddy craftsmanship technically, but very real. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the genre. In a nutshell, it's allegedly where "Jaws" came from. Dare I say it 're-mystifies' the Great White Shark, and our re-introduction is a brutal experience.

The wealthy Peter Gimble, model for Mr. Hooper of Jaws, hires a ship and a crew and staffs it with a truly mixed bag of professional underwater naturalists and photographers (and one folk singer) and sets off in pursuit of the great white shark. By the film's midpoint, cast and crew are in open mutiny. Peter Mathiessen, hired as voyage historian, thought the product of the trip would be the world's most expensive home movie but it is considerably more interesting, detailing in surprisingly vivid terms some real highs and lows for a trip that is part carnival, part nature study. Contrary to expectations, the most striking sequence involves not a great white shark but a group of sharks (primarily blues) feeding on a sperm whale carcass. By exiting the shark cages and photographing the feeding up close, the divers raised the bar considerably on this kind of filming. There are also memorable moments as when Stan Waterman and Valerie Taylor struggle through high seas to get back aboard the boat and Mr. Waterman promises the cameraman that if he ever films them struggling like that again without helping them, he will find himself in the water with them. The sequences involving the great white are not surprisingly very striking. I suspect there was a little after-action photography added to the sequence showing Peter Lake trying to cut the rope holding the great white to his cage. A minor point in a great film. There are also some great moments under the credits, my favorite being Stan Waterman describing how to drive off a shark with a SCUBA knife. A real treat if you ever get to see this.

An interesting film and seafaring adventure of an expedition tracking a great white shark through hundreds of miles of open sea spanning three continents. The search finally bears fruit some 83 minutes into the film which has a leisurely pace throughout and captures the feeding frenzy of white tips on whale carcasses, and barracudas also manage to get screen time for several minutes. Peter Gimbel and his crew are frustrated by their failure to spot a great white but finally get lucky at Dangerous Reef on the south coast of Australia. Here, Gimbel is finally rewarded with great footage of the huge fish. Shark cages are used to film the great white that seems more intent on the cage and the divers inside than the bait dangled before it. An Australian diver relates his run-in with a great white in the ocean, detailing his injuries and his miraculous escape. The footage of the underwater sequences throughout the movie is expertly done.

Although I was young when I saw this movie, it has stuck with me all through the years. This is the movie that spawned my interest in sharks! I praise the makers for such a wonderful idea, too bad it got lost in all the Jaws "wake".