In June 2017, I travelled to the excessive Arctic in Northern Canada on a shoot for the Netflix sequence Our Planet with director Sophie Lanfear, says documentary cinematographer Jamie McPherson.
The additional north you go, the smaller the planes get. You hop from group to group, till snow and ice cowl every thing so far as the attention can see. Having travelled from Heathrow to Iqaluit, after which to Pond Inlet, our closing cease was Arctic Bay in Nunavut, the place we met our helicopter pilot Jean-Michel Dumont.
We had come all this solution to movie narwhals. Because the sea-ice breaks up in the beginning of summer time, these cetaceans queue alongside the ice edge, ready for cracks to open. They then swim down the cracks to allow them to hunt fish in areas they haven’t been in a position to attain all winter.
We loaded our package into the helicopter and flew out to the sea-ice to fulfill the remainder of the crew – underwater cameraman Doug Anderson and assistant producer Hugh Wilson.
We have been tenting on the sea-ice, which is a tremendous, if barely terrifying, expertise. Our camp was in the course of the bay, our tents perched on one metre of ice with the open ocean under. It’s fairly surreal to bang nails into ice slightly than utilizing conventional pegs!
We have been very conscious that we have been on borrowed time. The ocean-ice was getting thinner by the day, and we might get up one morning to search out ourselves floating out to sea. The presence of such massive numbers of narwhals additionally attracted the eye of polar bears, so we continually saved an eye fixed out round camp, and instigated a ‘polar bear watch’ at night time.
To movie the narwhals, we used the helicopter to go looking alongside the floe edge. Once we situated them, we’d name within the underwater crew. At the moment of yr, with the water warming, the realm was usually shrouded in thick fog. Whereas the underwater groups might journey by snowmobile, fog and helicopters don’t combine, and we have been usually grounded. We obtained caught out just a few occasions, compelled to land and await the fog to carry.
As the times handed, we obtained some really mesmerising photographs of the narwhals, each underwater and from the air. They’re probably the most weird but magical creatures I’ve ever seen.
With many of the supposed sequence within the bag, the one parts we have been now lacking have been ground-level photographs of the narwhals coming to the floor to breathe. So, we discovered an acceptable respiratory pool and deliberate to rig the digicam to a small boat the underwater crew had been utilizing, which we had situated close to an acceptable pool the day gone by.
With only a few days left on the shoot, we took the chopper to the pool. The solar was shining and from the air we might see that the narwhals have been already en route. The pool was a short lived hole within the ice that opened and closed with the tide, so we solely had a small window to land, load and rig the package within the boat, and place ourselves on the water.
From the air, we additionally occurred to identify a big male polar bear, quick asleep by the pool. Excellent, we thought. We might seize the narwhals and the bear in the identical shot! Filming from the boat, we might be secure. Worst-case situation, we might fireplace bangers to scare him away.
As we prepped the boat, which at this level was nonetheless on the ice beside the pool, Jean-Michel determined it was a very good time to prime up with gas from a close-by cache. All of us agreed that will be fantastic. The sunshine was gorgeous and the narwhals appeared very snug in our presence.
However because the helicopter flew off, the polar bear awakened – and instantly made a beeline for us. Nonetheless on the ‘shore’, we have been fairly straightforward prey. Peter obtained his shotgun out to fireplace a warning shot to maneuver the bear away from us, solely to find that the gun didn’t work.
We had no time to lose. We scrambled to get the boat into the water as quick as we might. The state of affairs shortly grew to become very tense, because the bear disappeared behind some ice, hiding itself from view – a polar bear’s favorite solution to hunt.
We shortly rigged up the small outboard engine, which might permit us to maintain our distance ought to the bear enter the water, solely to find that the motor didn’t work, both. There we have been, being ambushed by a in all probability very hungry polar bear, in a ship with no engine and no technique of defending ourselves.
We paddled into the center of the pool and saved look ahead to the polar bear breaking cowl. Filming narwhals was now off the desk, so I laid out my toolkit to improvise a defence. Our greatest choices have been now throwing spanners or a flask of tepid tea.
We referred to as Jean-Michel on the satphone as, to compound issues, a thick financial institution of fog was now rolling in quick. Not solely that, however the wind was additionally quickly closing the pool. Because the circumstances obtained worse for us, they grew to become more and more beneficial for a looking polar bear.
Jean-Michel had been grounded earlier than he might attain the gas cache, however listening to of our predicament, he took off anyway. With superb ability, he navigated his approach again by following cracks within the ice that he recognised from earlier. Listening to the chopper approaching overhead was the most effective sounds I’ve ever heard. Jean-Michel flew over us, scaring the bear away, and managed to land.
We ended up getting the photographs we needed, and I’ll all the time be grateful to Jean-Michel for stopping me having to struggle off a polar bear with a set of adjustable spanners and a flask of tea.
