AUSTRALIA CORAL SEA • BAHAMAS • BALI • HAWAII • INDONESIA • MALDIVES • RED SEA • SOLOMON ISLANDS

FILMS AND AWARDS
1996 Silver Telly Winner 17th Annual Telly Awards The Telly Awards recognize outstanding achievement in non-network video and film production. Past Telly winners include:  The Disney Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Nike, NASA. 1997 Targa Prefetto Festival Internezional Del Cinema Di Salerno Salerno, Italy 1996 Finalist 6th Annual International Bird and Wildlife Film Festival 1994 Honorable Mention Annual International Marine and Exploration Film Festival		The Sea Within DEEP HUNTERS    The award-winning film DEEP HUNTERS focuses on the shark and its importance to the planetary ecological community.  Divers observe and photograph electrifying feeding and attack behaviors of the Carribean gray shark without the confines of protective cages.     DEEP HUNTERS has been broadcast throughout the United States, Canada, France, Mexico, Greece, Italy, Russia, and other countries.   The Sea Within DEEP COLOR      Journey underwater among the coral reefs of Hawaii, Grand Cayman Island, and the Bahamas in DEEP COLOR, the first of a six-part series The Sea Within by Austin, Texas filmmaker and photographer Greg Whiteley.   Shimmering schools of fish and intricate coral formations punctuate the oceanic vastness with life forms both strange and beautiful to the human eye.  Colorful "gardens" of sea life and territorial sharks inhabit this world we are just beginning to explore.      As DEEP COLOR reveals man's vital connection with the ocean, it becomes clear how our present day actions can severely jeopardize the delicate balance of the living reefs.

The sight of a shark cruising the reef is one of the more imposing scenes in nature. Often considered the perfect predator, sharks have highly developed senses and are instinctually aggressive. As rulers of the reef, they patrol their territories relentlessly, removing weak and dying marine animals from the genetic pool. Sharks serve as an important part of the underwater community.

The image of a shark evokes a deep primordial fear. Ominous and foreboding, the creature has emerged from 250 million years of evolutuion to be considered the very embodiment of evil. The terror and great beauty found within the psyche are reflected in the creatures we find beneath the surface. Man has projected his own agressive shadow nature, his propensity for cruelty and mindless violence onto the shark, when in fact sharks are merely elegant, instinctual creatures at the top of the food chain in the marine environment, just as man is at the top of the food chain in his own terrestrial environment.

Sharks are a keystone species. The removal of a keystone species from an ecological community causes drastic changes in substantial parts of the community.  A large number of other species will either decline to extinction or multiply to unprecedented abundance. The community will be invaded by previously excluded species which impacts the structure of the food web even more. With a species as diverse as the shark, its removal from the environment would drastically impact the global ecology.