KAPINGAMARANGI ATOLL FREE DIVER (1969)

Forty years ago flippers/fins and snorkels had not arrived at Kapinga. I followed Kalio where he was spear fishing on the outside of the reef.

Visibility about 60 meters, water temperature about 30 degrees. The spear gun was exceptionally long – possibly to get within range of the tiny fish.  Remember, no flippers and no snorkel were being used, just simple goggles.

The divers probably did not understand how to equalize ear pressure either.

The small fish are given a quick bite to paralyze them.

It was a rare opportunity to document this style of free diving.

Kalio will soon be surprised when he see’s these pictures for the first time after all these years.

Kalio and friends show us the  Japanese seaplane wreckage on a nearby island. During WW2 Japan had a weather station here.  Girls wear traditional island clothing with bare tops. This ancient style would soon change.

SHARK ATTACKS DINGHY

1. Sharks love the color red. 2. Sharks are said to be attracted to dogs 3. It’s a mistake to bump into a shark with a boat – especially when following one like the above, at any speed.

At first Ben and I thought it was a tiger shark. Now I am not so sure after receiving an email reply from John D. Stevens of Australia’s CSIRO.  Maybe it was a lemon shark after all?

John D. Stevens says: “It’s not a tiger shark, species unidentifiable”.

The confusion was came after we saw numerous tiger sharks on the reef shallows that same morning, attracted by possibly a harpooned dugong or turtle, or stingray – something large enough  when injured to  provided a stimulus attraction.

These were big sharks, 2.5 meters and upwards, with a single four meter monster seen the next day.

Unusual for so many in a tiny area without something having brought them in.

Batt Reef is a big sandy and shallow reef running some ten nautical miles in length, located off Port Douglas, Queensland.

(It’s where the TV celebrity Steve Irwin was fatally spiked in the chest by a large stingray a few months after our episode also at Batt Reef).

THE GREAT HENRI BOURCE

Henri ran a medical re-compression chamber service in Melbourne, treating patients following spider bites, gangrene, lung problems and slow healing wounds.

I tested the often suggested hangover treatment of breathing oxygen to relieve the headache.

One Sunday morning we breathed what I assumed to be pure O2 under pressure equal to about 27 feet depth for 60 minutes .

There was little or no positive effect worth recommending.

The $200 fee for one hour was probably cheap.

By 1997 when this picture was made, Henri was in advanced stages of the leukemia which was to later take his life.

To combat phantom pains (itches and aches etc.) in the lost lower half of a leg, Henri learned self hypnosis soon after his ‘accident’ as he called the shark attack.

The effect was, he could explain how the shark bit his leg off and almost turn the incident into humor, sometimes.

 

So convincing was his attitude to living normal life, without thinking I once criticized him for parking in a disabled parking space.

Henri Bource led a double life. Rock musician and underwater film maker. People who knew him as diver were unaware he had toured as sax player in the Melbourne group The Thunderbirds – supporting local stars for leading USA artists of the sixties.

Henri’s life story remains untold. He is survived by wife Liz and sons Philippe and Henri Jr.

POSSIBLE SHARK VICTIM

From the stern of Peter Bristow’s game fishing boat Avalon our documentary film shows tiger sharks ‘recycling’ a 1006 pound black marlin.

The location was the Ribbon Reef’s east of Cooktown, and north of Cairns, Queensland, near where various divers would ‘vanish’ in the following years.

A dozen or more large sharks including a few bull sharks, several tigers and lone oceanic whaler shark were caught on film with my pole camera, co-designed by Peter Bristow.

Peter Bristow had been seeing big tiger sharks feeding at sea behind the ‘mother ship’ for weeks. He suggested over the phone this would be a perfect way of getting good scenes.

Believed eaten by shark while free diving solo.

Doug had a dive shop at Kingscliffe and then Tweed Heads in northern New SOuth Wales when I first knew him.

This picture was Doug at Cairns a few years later. He’d bought a charter boat and was doing well with dive trips.

Spearfishing alone one afternoon out from Cairns, he failed to return. They found his lead belt, maybe with shark teeth marks and his speargun – nothing else. We have recently learned Doug Smith was spear fishing in very hostile waters that fateful day.

COMMENT
Doug Smith had a bad habit of spear fishing on scuba and carrying the catch inside his wetsuit. (Peter Bristow, charter boat skipper).

2nd COMMENT

“I fished exactly where Doug Smith disappeared and caught eleven tiger sharks (all) over 13 feet in length and within a week of Doug’s disappearance at Pellowe Reef”. (from Shark Man by Vic Hislop).

The first tiger shark caught by Vic was a 14 footer. Within minutes it was bitten in halves by an even larger tiger shark about 17 feet long. Water depth only 25 feet and 30 meters from the edge of the reef.

THE KING OF KING ISLAND SHARK FISHERMEN (1940’s)

Off the southern end of King Island, (between the Australian mainland and the island State of Tasmania) Doug Collins caught many sharks while working his shark fishing business in the late 1940’s. The shark liver was in demand for pharmaceutical products needed for the war. One memorable day had the deck full of sharks, and being a keen amateur photographer, Doug made these pictures. Larger sharks than what is commonly caught these days. Doug Collins’ home was near to the University of the Sea (aka Terry Morrison’s NAUI Scuba School) at Tweed Heads. That’s where I met Doug. He was a skilled machinist who played with electric motors from refrigerators turning these into home made air conditioners. He also invented a device for handicapped lawn bowlers to enable them to pick up their bowling balls without needing to bend their back. Doug was a friendly man. I wish he’d given us more information about his shark fishing days. He was always side-tracking the conversation onto more interesting thoughts, such as his belief that pirates treasure was hidden at the western entrance to Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay. Doug had been there several times, digging and drilling with permits into the sandstone cliffs, convinced that below was a lost treasure from the pirate era of Bass Strait. A cave where the roof had collapsed burying the booty. At one stage there were more pirates in Bass Strait than anywhere in the world, I read somewhere once. Maybe Doug was on the right track? Doug Collins based his research on fisherman’s tales and his own personal observations especially of behavior by an old chap with a secret source of Spanish coins which was traded for a steady income. Photo: Estate of Douglas Collins

“AQUARIUS” (1970) QUEENSLAND SEAFARI (1974); AUSTRALIAN SEAFARI (1986))

Jocelyn Edwards featured with tiger sharks caught by fishermen off Cairns - pre Jaws - the movie

It seems incredible today the distances I used to drive without much planning. For example this picture was at Mount Gambier, South Australia. A week before I was in Cairns, North Queensland and a week before that in Darwin, Northern Territory. (See picture below).
I’d driven to Mt Gambier to join a USA underwater photo team which included my pen friend Hillary Hauser from California who was writing the text.

Hillary’s former husband was Dick Anderson who had MC’d our underwater film expo show in Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

The trip to South Australia proved a mini sea change. Here I met Barry Holmes (pictured) who was a trusted distributor of the outback classic documentary Northern Safari owned by Keith F Adams of Perth.

It turned out Northern Safari was booked for a return season of shows in New South Wales and there was an opening for another person to join the team.

I was invited in after a meeting with Keith F Adams (The General), Barry Holmes, Tom Stokes and Ray Grimsey.

Men who had been with the traveling show, independently and showing it all over the world for more than ten years.

Barry had worked in South Africa showing Northern Safari. In Australia he was allocated Victoria.

Tom Stokes had several years touring England with the film.

Ray Grimsey had been allocated Canada, Queensland and New South Wales as his territories.

Keith Adams kept Western Australia for himself plus USA.

Often the team would gather for a joint effort in a new territory such as was the case with New Zealand and with Tasmanian shows.

Amongst the theatre industry people the film was legendary. Pre Crocodile Dundee it was the highest grossing Australian film – ever.

I can’t find it listed in movie history books. Why? A mystery.

Maybe as a 16mm film it didn’t qualify as “professional”.

Keith made great profits as he and his team always handled the cash themselves.

Film distributing companies were not very honest in the days when the film first appeared.

Footnote: Here’s a Following the Footsteps example.
My father had been a traveling picture showman on the New South Wales south coast before getting a steady job as projectionist with the Kings Theatre, Bega.

Later he bought a small cafe nearby, then a series of small hotels. I didn’t mind following his film show footsteps.

Life in the Sydney pubs was a bit tougher.

This was the last show dates for Aquarius. Looking back at the text today shows the simple attitude we had then.

The public was largely ignorant of anything underwater. The most simple tabloid terms were required.

Anything of an environmental description probably would have gone over the head of even university professors in those times. At least that’s I how recall it. You’d go broke trying to show pretty fish films.

Killer whales of San Diego was, in reality part of an oceanarium show using captive killer whales. It was a good sequence which I used in other films for many years. Today it would draw sympathy for tiny tank two large whales lived and performed jumps in. The same oceanarium today is vastly different.

The ‘Hawaiian hippy surfers’ was a brief scene from a deserted beach on Maui – before development of resorts. New Zealand film censors objected to a few frames of frontal nudity. The “banning” proved to be free government advertising – the screenings did very well as a result, establishing a theatre attendance record for a 16mm film.

The “Lost island paradise” is Kapingamarangi Atoll- (Eastern Caroline Islands) fully covered elsewhere in these archives. Rare pictures today.

“Beatiful mermaids” (sic) was intended to read beautiful mermaids.

If the poster was a postage stamp or a coin, any mistake would make it extra valuable. The print run for this poster was maybe 1,000 copies. Few survive today.

Jocelyn appeared in the re-edited version with extra footage which became Queensland Seafari.

FIRST WHITE POINTER, DIVER ENCOUNTER 1963

In 1963 meeting a large shark underwater - and surviving was considered remarkable. In this case the shark came off 2nd best. It was the beginning of an era of power head shark hunting. 12 gauge shotgun and later .303 military ammunition. The trend was short-lived as it was soon found that power heads were more dangerous in the hands of careless divers than the chances of being bitten by a shark.

FIRST TIGER SHARK, DIVER ENCOUNTER. THE SWAIN REEFS (1961)

Very amazing Tiger shark pictures that stunned the world in 1961. A very large shark, barbless "killer spear" and proof that a diver could survive a serious shark encounter.

Ron Zangari was the deckhand aboard Riversong when Sydney divers Ron Taylor & Ben Cropp wrote to him with an inquiry as to how they might get to the outer barrier reef.

The result was, Ron and Ben made two exciting trips aboard the Riversong with Wally Muller and Ron Zangari. They spear fished in The Swain Reefs – a very exciting unknown destination in 1961-62.

The tiger shark featured on the cover Ben’s book shows Ron Zangari with the killer spear that penetrated the large shark easily.

The tiger was attracted to fish frames and skins being slowly dropped over the side as Wally filleted the day’s catch. Film of the shark appears in the hit documentary The Shark Hunters. The film proved so popular when it was first shown on TV, it was repeated the following week.

The revolutionary killer spear was a conventional 3/8″ shaft with a three-sided triangular point, like a needle. It was designed to paralyze sharks IF the spear touched the spine. Without barbs to hold the spear it would pull out if the shark was to swim away. Thus saving a lost or bent spear.

This was an experimental device demonstrated in their documentary. Underwater cinematography by Ron and featuring Ben as the star diver.

The spear was never commercially marketed, the shotgun powerhead was about to make tabloid headlines around the world as the first anti-shark device for shipwreck survivors and others.

(Like all weapons, it was prone to mis-use in subsequent years. It would be interesting to learn how many were commercially manufactured in Australia).

FILM MAKING WITH GREY REEF SHARKS – CHESTERFIELD REEF (1971)

Arriving at these remote reefs the charter boat was surrounded by grey reef whaler sharks – at least a dozen on the surface. Normally it’s unusual for sharks to do this – except at places where few boats go.

In this case we’d ventured into the French Pacific Territories in a quest for rare sea shells (by half of the crew). The others, including ourselves were just interested in having a good time.

My trip was sponsored by Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper, and Fathom magazine.

Also aboard was my father, John Michael Harding who is standing next to Roy Bisson and watching the action below.

Two medical doctors are either side. At one stage they took a blood transfusion kit aboard the small dinghy with Ron and Valerie Taylor – just in case. This gives an indication on how territorial these small sharks were.

It’s more curiosity than aggression – in most but not all examples.

At another reef we experienced how territorial these whalers can be – almost enough to put you out of the water and go elsewhere.

My theory today is that sharks behave like this when divers are something new to them.

On the coast we are no longer a threatening novelty and sharks settle down to minding their own business. Eventually to become “trained” if food is regularly being offered.

These then are no longer wild sharks having become partially domesticated.

This is what dive tourism enjoys. Packaging cheap and relatively safe thrills to the the new breed of diving punters.

The rare, large traveling shark is a different proposition as we learned some years ago at Byron Bay. You can’t do much to avoid one of these monsters if it’s looking for a feed.

TIGER SHARK CAUGHT – MURRAY ISLAND (MER ISLAND)

Locals with Tiger shark caught overnight on a set line. Murray Island (also known as Mer Island) is near the Australian border with Papua New Guinea. There is an airstrip with flights to Cairns. Accommodation is available and is not cheap. Locals rely on a diet of turtles to keep them going, although fish is preferred. Tropical Reef Lobster are common on nearby reefs where they are dived for. This is a northern outpost of Australian territory in The Coral Sea.

Adam Cropp inspects live Tiger shark at Murray Island (Mer Island)