Our Planet II : Our Planet On The Move
69.3772° N, 81.7980° W
We travelled to the far north of the Canadian Arctic to film a new Walrus story for the Our Planet II series. The remit of the shoot was to camp on the edge of an island and head out into the Northwest Passage to try and find Walrus hauled out on ice floes and film their daily lives.
The Walrus feed on the bottom of the ocean but need to haul out on whatever they can, in this case bits of ice, in order to rest and digest before the next feeding session. The availability of these bits of ice is becoming less and less due to drastic reduction in the size of local glaciers which provided the ice via calving events.
When this ice supply is no longer reliable the effect of this on the local population could be devastating.
It took a chain of sleds to get out gear to the Inuit hunting outpost that was going to be our base for the six weeks.
Our sleeping hut was simple but cosy. After a successful session we would watch the footage and discuss next aims for the shoot.
When the weather conditions allowed we would set off in search of Walrus. Sometimes we found them, sometimes we didn't. Needle in a haystack.
The stark nature of the scene from the air really gives it context. Once we came across a scenario like this we would edge closer to the Walrus over the course of an hour or longer. They are hunted by the Inuit so are particularly weary of humans initially but we found if we took things slowly we gained their trust and we could film their natural behaviour.
The old saying of look after your tools and they will look after you holds true in wildlife filmmaking. I would meticulously bag, ratchet and tarp over the GSS system after each filming session to keep it in tip top working condition. Depending on how far we had floated and travelled for the day it could take us up to two hours to get back to camp traveling at full speed in our little boat.
Being in truly beautiful and inspirational wild places with likeminded dedicated people is why I love this job so much. More importantly overcoming challenges together and portraying the story of these incredible animals for the world to see felt very rewarding when we did finally get the shots we needed.
You can see the finished sequence in the Our Planet On The Move episode of the Our Planet II series on Netflix.