Travel Channel’s Treasure Hunter Visits Two Harbors
In December of 2007 the Travel Channel’s “Cash & Treasures” show came out to Two Harbors to do a piece on Lobsters (you know what they say… one man’s bottom feeder is another man’s treasure). The show aired in the spring of 2008. It was great fun having them film here. The days were long but Kirsten and the crew were great! For me it was particularly fun because I got to fill in for their videographer when he injured his ear (not badly) on our first dive.
Recently I received an email from the production company to promote the relaunching of the show now being called “Treasure Hunter”. Same cast and crew. When I linked to the site I found that they had posted blogs about their experience here in Two Harbors. Click here to link to their blog.
After reading the blogs I reminisced on my fill-in videographer experience with them (yes, I did get credit at the end) and thought I would share it with you….
I have enjoyed underwater photography for many years, and even teach it on a very basic level, but up to that point my only videography experience had been on land and only at family events - you know kids opening Christmas presents and such. So when their videographer’s ears went bad and Dave told them that I could do it I said, ”sure”. Of course I could do underwater video at night - no problem.
Really, I had no idea how to operate the camera and it wasn’t like anyone could talk me through it while I was underwater. Bucky, the real videographer, gave me a brief briefing, turned the camera on, dialed in the settings, and handed the camera to me once I was in the water. They told me the shot to get and I went down and got it. Kirsten calls me a Rock Star but really it was all luck. The biggest challenge for me was to keep the camera on Kirsten and Diver Dave. I am used to taking photos of animals. So whenever I saw something like the Horn Shark or an eel my attention, and the shot, got sidetracked. Did I mention that this was also Kirsten’s first night dive and I was down there to make sure she was safe?! By the way SHE rocks!!!! I have never seen anybody take to night diving as easily as she did. But I digress…..
All-in-all it seems I was able to shoot what they wanted, everyone was safe and I ended up with a lot of good stories. At one point during the night I was supposed to go down and film a hoop-net on the bottom with a lobster in it and then film it as it was being pulled up. Simple. I went down with Super J, my dive buddy, and the hoop-net was covered in elk kelp. So J and I started to pull the kelp off the net. As the kelp gets removed we uncover the hoop-net and the very unhappy swell shark and a giant sheep crab in it. Both were desperate to get out of the hoop-net and away from each other. There was also a lobster but it was on the outside of the hoop-net. The lobster was trying to get in to feed on the bait but there just wasn’t any room. All the commotion was stirring up quite the sand cloud. Not the scene we had planned. J and I felt sorry for the swell shark and freed it (okay so I wouldn’t make a very good wildlife photographer), we thought the crab would make a good shot and knew they would throw it back so we left it in the hoop-net, but what to do about the lobster… I just want to preface this next part by saying that I am not a hunter in any way shape or form, but up to this point we had been skunked by the buggers and we had no footage of a lobster being caught underwater. So I thought I would get a shot of me catching the lobster. I held the camera in one hand and grabbed the lobster with the other…. (when the idea came to me it seemed intelligent). Before I could think of my next brilliant move the lobster broke free of my grip and slammed at full speed into my face. More sand cloud. Once I regained my senses and J stopped laughing at me we pulled on the hoop-net line and signaled for them to pull up the hoop-net. I got a great shot of the hoop-net and crab being pulled up (it even made it into the show) which is good because everything before that was just one big cloud of sand.
Anyhow, I have great memories of the cast and crew of “Cash & Treasures” and I wish them all the luck in their new series. Maybe they will find another treasure to hunt on Catalina and come back for a visit. I would be happy to offer my video expertise to them again.
Posted by Hilary Boyce on January 10th, 2009 | Posted in Diving, Uncategorized |
Great post Hilary!