Pirates and Piranhas!

When the BBC launched an expedition to film the bizarre wildlife of the Amazon basin, the chance to supervise the diving was an opportunity not to be missed. Richard Bull reports. Photographs by Mike Pitts

 

 

The Amazon represents something of a challenge to underwater film-makers. There’s everything from piranhas to pirates. Visibility is measured in millimetres and mosquitoes are measured in millions. Massive anaconda lurk in the sepia waters and there’s even a fish that wants to make a home in your privates! Virtually no diving is done there, so, naturally, there is virtually no dive support within hundreds of miles.

It was an ambitious expedition by any standards. We had five camera crews – three underwater and two topside – three sound recordists and a dedicated camera technician. Together with fixers and production staff this made a total of about 28 people. There was to be a ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) for filming in deep water. We had four vessels: two accommodation boats, a dedicated dive platform and a boat dedicated to the ROV.

The majority of the underwater filming was on high-definition cameras in Amphibico housings. This is state-of-the-art kit, but big and heavy. Each unit weighed 30 to 40kg, so it was really a two-man job to get it in and out of the water safely. We planned to use rebreathers, and on board we had five Inspirations, a BioMarine 15.5, a BioMaine BMR 500, and a modified Dräger Dolphin. Open-circuit in the form of twin 7-litre set was to be used to run the Nuytco Talent helmet – a sort of updated LAMA Bubble Helmet.

One of our more pressing concerns was the notorious candirufish. Let me tell you a little about candiru. There are lots of species, but the one most people have heard about is the very small fish that has been known to embed itself inside the penis of unfortunate swimmers. The pain, apparently, is beyond belief. Candiru are attracted by urine – they follow the scent back to source and then make a little home for themselves in a place where parasites are definitely not welcome. Once inside, they maintain position with the use of a spiked barb. Rule number one in the Amazon – no peeing in your wetsuits!

We finally got together aboard the accommodation boats in Manaus and the plan was to depart as soon as possible on the three-day river journey to Santarem where we would have a one-day shakedown before we started filming. We needed some time together with the equipment without the pressure of filming, so the priority was to get the compressor loaded and set off. Unfortunately, said compressor had been ‘detained’ in customs. We set off anyway and three days later were anchored in the Rio Arapiuns with no compressor, but assurances that it was on its way from Manaus by speedboat.

So, no compressor and therefore no air, but we did have oxygen, so we could run the rebreathers as closed-circuit oxygen units. Five days after arriving in Brazil, Mike Pitts and Ian Thomas made the first dives of the expedition – to an O2-safe depth of 3m. Despite the shallow depth, the exercise was invaluable, as were the rest of oxygen shakedown dives we carried out over the next few days. Of course, the danger with using pure oxygen is that it becomes toxic at relatively shallow depths. I impose an absolute maximum of 5m when working with pure O2.
Let me explain why all these preparatory dives were necessary. Rebreathers are as safe as houses, but when they bite, they bite hard and accidents are invariably the result of a failure to carry out pre-dive procedures completely and correctly. The only way to ensure that this is done is to physically go through a tick box checklist before every dive, with every diver. All our underwater cameramen were very experienced and essentially free spirits. I wasn’t sure how they’d react to going through my 15-point checklist before every dive. One thing, however, was certain – like it or not, procedures would be followed to the letter!

Even getting kitted up for an Amazon dive is different. It’s around two degrees south of the Equator so it’s hot, there’s jungle all around and it sounds like it. Dead trees float by at a good pace, along with other debris. When you jump in there is absolutely no sensation of cold – the 3mm wetsuit is for protection only. Protection against what? Well, you know in your own mind that piranha, candiru, caiman, and anaconda are waiting in droves to munch, crunch, or penetrate some sensitive portion of your body.

You don’t see any of these as you descend but the visibility in the tea-coloured water is rarely more than 3m, so these famous Amazonian predators are worryingly just out of your vision. There is no taste of salt, of course, and, for a brief moment, as you get sight of the bottom with debris of leaves and tree branches, you could even be in a British inland site. The first stingray you see hauls you straight back to the Amazon – and, of course, there are piranha. Very strange catfish are everywhere and you hope the candiru aren’t.

At last the compressor arrived and we were able to start diving in earnest. Although the divers were themselves responsible for correct assembly and checking of their rebreathers, my checklist routine still took place with every diver before every dive. My checklist asks, for instance, ‘oxygen on?’ and if the diver confirms that it is, I tick the box. It asks ‘absorbent time remaining?’ I need the diver to give me a figure on this one. If it’s okay I enter it on the checklist and tick the box. The last box to be ticked is ‘pre-dive breathing completed’. Each diver would get a new sheet for each dive.

All this may sound a bit excessive, but ask yourself this question. How many sport-diving rebreather accidents would have been avoided if this procedure had been in place? Answer: lots. In fact, once the diver gets used to it, it’s not intrusive at all. Maybe it will become standard procedure among sports divers as rebreather diving matures – 25 years ago, British divers used to dive to 50m with a single 12 litre and no bail-out or back-up – but we learned.

We had to keep reminding ourselves that this wasn’t the sea. For a start, the size of the rivers was quite unbelievable – miles wide, even 800 miles inland and 100m deep in places. And then there were things underwater that… well, you just wouldn’t expect to see them in fresh water. Dolphins, for instance, abounded in some places, and stingrays seemed to be everywhere. The boats took us as far as they could go up the Rio Arapiuns and it was here that an enormous colony of sponges was discovered at about 20m.

The sponges provided shelter for lots of different fish and we definitely wanted to spend as much time as possible filming this otherworldly ecosystem. But by then we had made a key discovery. When it came to filming wildlife, night diving was much more productive because the creatures generally came out of hiding and were easier to film. So we buoyed the site and filmed it by night.

After ten days of intensive diving on the Rio Tapajos and Rio Arapiuns we set off on the three-day journey back to Manaus to dive the murky waters of the Rio Negro. The plan was then to push on another two days to dive the igarapes of the Rio Branco.

Igarapes are very small tributaries off the main rivers, and we certainly knew we weren’t at sea when we dived these because the jungle encroaches at every point. Again, we dived these at night but the only way we could penetrate them was to use the local outboard-powered wooden or aluminium canoes called voadeiras. Machetes were obligatory. The voadeiras were surprisingly stable as dive platforms, though a little crowded with two rebreathers, cameras, lights, comms equipment, cameraman, standby diver, supervisor, and two local guides on board. I remember being on a dive platform in an igarapes, watching the bubble-free camera team silhouetted by their own filming lights in the middle of the night. It was eerily beautiful, almost a spiritual experience.

Over the five-week period, we did a lot of dives, but there was one in particular that proved to be memorable. It came towards the end of the expedition. The task was to film Mike De Gruy diving, in the Nuytco Talent Helmet, with candirufish at night. Mike Pitts was camera operator, Ian Thomas did the lighting, Florian operated a camera sled, Kasic recorded the sound and I supervised. Ian Kellett dived with Mike De Gruy.

This was a bigger team than we normally dived with, but what singled the dive out was the candirufish our guys were filming. Our target was a larger (6–10cm) species than the urine-fancying version and I have to say that this was the most voracious and aggressive eater of flesh I have ever seen. Watching them tear into a carcass was a weirdly unsettling experiences – they make piranha look like goldfish by comparison!

After five weeks of tough diving, hundreds of miles of river travel, and thousands of mosquito bites, we had achieved our goals. We had dived and filmed the rivers of the Amazon. We had dived in a few metres of water in the middle of the jungle and in deep holes in the middle of rivers miles wide. The Amazon is one of the most amazing places I have ever visited but at the same time, it is one of the most difficult working environments I have ever experienced. There were times when the diving and filming tasks seemed impossible. Without the determination and unity of purpose of everybody, we might not have made it. The laughs were there as well, and by the end of the expedition even the Americans were beginning to understand British humour!