I traveled to the far flung Aleutian Islands in 2022 to shoot a spectacle sequence for the Our Planet II series. These islands have been on my bucket list so I was pretty excited to get out there and see what they offered, they did not disappoint. The Bearing sea is an unforgiving place and the word dramatic doesn’t even do it justice. For a few months in the year cold water upwellings drive nutrients to the surface resulting in an explosion of life. Short tailed shearwaters, one of the true wanderers of the sea, gather in huge numbers to take advantage of this seasonal bounty and migrating humpback whales hang around on their migration feeding on the krill bonanza. The result is one of the greatest gatherings of animals on Earth.

We had a super team on location made up of myself on the GSS (Gyro Stabilised Camera System) which houses a RED camera and Canon 50-1000mm lens and delivers rocksteady images in rough conditions. Connor Gallagher was on the Inspire 2 and absolutely smashed the aerials out the park. The average sea state was around 8 feet and it takes some doing launching big drones in these conditions, hats off to him. Last but not least we had Jamie Curtis-Hayward calling the shots in the field as the director. It was a trip of a lifetime.

See the results in first episode of Our Planet II on Netflix.