NB: Reprinted here with the permission of the original author - Paul Garland.

 

Those of you who have watched the BBC series ‘Human Planet’ will recall the amazing first episode ‘Oceans’. Unless you’ve been a regular reader of this magazine for the last few years, what you may not have known is that one of the cameramen featured in that episode was a semi-regular contributor.  Simon Enderby used to send a ‘Message in a Bottle’ all the way from South East Asia where he was and still is running a filming company called Scubazoo Images. A lot has happened in Simon’s life since his last ‘Message’ so I thought it was time that we caught up with him.  Right after ‘Oceans’ had finished I sent him an email and this was his reply:-

 

“Sorry Paul just finished a Bear Gryll’s shoot and after just 8 hours from waving them off I am now back into the jungle to assist a German film crew on a Sumatran rhino shoot and not back out of here until the 28th.  I am very sorry to say I have no time to write something up for your February deadline but happy to write up something more for the message in a bottle strand in future months to come. In the mean time I am very happy for you to use all you can from our website , www.scubazoo.com, for the BBC Human Planet piece.”

 

Now that I have the permission I thought I’d start with a short introduction to Scubazoo and then move the focus to Simon and his adventures.

 

Welcome to the world of Scubazoo and SIMON ENDERBY

Operations Director/Senior Cameraman and, most importantly, Feltwellian

 

Scubazoo are South East Asia’s leading underwater filming and photography company. Based in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, we are dedicated to producing high quality programming, and providing filming services such as location management and equipment hire for our clients.

Scubazoo’s team has a wealth of underwater imaging experience – our scope of work has ranged over a broad spectrum of different projects, including filming and location management for productions filmed in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Tonga, South Africa, US, Canada, Thailand, Mozambique and more for broadcast on channels such as BBC, National Geographic, Discovery, Animal Planet, CNN, and ITV.

 

 

Simon started out at Feltwell Primary before moving onto Thetford Grammar school before finally graduating from Aberdeen University with a BSc (Hons.) degree in Marine Zoology. He was a leading figure in the first scientific research expedition to Pulau Layang Layang, Malaysia in the South China Sea. Having worked with the Sea Mammal Research Unit and British Antarctic Survey in the UK, he returned to Malaysia in 1997 to survey the entire coast and coral reefs of Sabah as well as run a turtle research programme.

 

Simon joined Scubazoo in early 1998 and bought into the company shortly after. He has dived extensively around the world, on many scientific and environmental assignments, as well as many of the company’s major broadcast filming projects. Simon has production managed and filmed on recent big budget BBC series such as  Last Chance To See with Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine, Deadly 60 with Steve Backshall & Human Planet. Simon has also headed several of Scubazoo’s environmental and scientific production projects, including the filming of the Brunei Rapid Marine bio-diversity assessment. Simon travelled around the globe in both 2005 and 2006 as an underwater cameraman on Animal Planet’s Great Ocean Adventures with presenter Monty Halls.

 

Over the years Simon has faced many unique and incredible situations whilst filming – wild saltwater crocodiles, bull Stellar & Californian Sea Lions, killer whales, predatory Humboldt Squid in the Sea of Cortez, South Africa’s incredible “Sardine Run”, great white sharks, feeding tiger sharks, giant octopus, six gilled sharks, humpback whales, wild dugongs & manatees, deep water wrecks and some of the worlds remotest sea mounts have all been covered. Simon’s dream is to re-trace his ancestor’s discovery of Enderby Land in Antarctica and compare their lives as old school whalers to his life as a modern day marine biologist/underwater cameraman.

 

When he finally takes off his Scubazoo hat and returns home there’s nothing Simon enjoys more than putting on his Chef’s toque and cooking for his wife and friends.

 

HUMAN PLANET – OCEANS as Simon saw it…

 

In the coral seas surrounding the Philippines a crew of Pa’aling fishermen take their lives in their hands in a highly dangerous mass fishing technique – “Hookah” diving. In this overfished area, diving to depths of over 20m is the only way to catch enough fish for the village. An antiquated air pump run by an ailing diesel generator, with an intricate web of hose pipes, provides the only air supply for the young divers below, who risk the all-too-lethal effects of the bends.

 

The production crew spent 10 days at sea with the Pa’aling fishermen, living on small wooden outrigger boats, open to the elements, while searching for good fishing grounds. To fully understand what it took to be a Pa’aling fisherman Simon decided to try out “Hookah” diving for himself and wasn’t left all that thrilled by the experience at all. “It’s one of the must rustic and dilapidated ways of trying to breathe underwater  - it’s an accident just waiting to happen”. And sure enough by just day 4 of filming and fishing 2 of the fishermen began to suffer fromt hs bends and by the end of the shoot another 3 of the fishermen were showing signs of  decompression sickness too.

 

Few people in the world have such an intimate relationship with the sea as the elusive Bajau Laut sea gypsies who spend most of their lives afloat. Rarely visiting the mainland, the Bajau Laut live in stilt huts over the coral reefs and on houseboats; some of them still have an incredible ability to hunt underwater holding their breath. The Human Planet team followed one Bajau spear fisherman, called Sulbin, as he defied the usual laws of nature with an incredible underwater hunt, 20m down, lasting two-and-a-half minutes.

 

 

 

Simon filmed Sulbin on his epic hunt. “As I bobbed around on the waters surface, in full scuba diving kit and with my underwater camera, I couldn’t help but be amazed as I watched Sulbin take a last few deep drags of his hand rolled cigarette, pull off his shirt and shorts, affix his wooden goggles over his eyes and take a few big breaths before slipping off his hand-made wooden boat and into the watery depths. I filmed as he descended to the 20m deep sea floor where he began to walk along the bottom as if on a gentle sunday morning stroll. After 2 minutes of searching Sulbin finally selected his desired fish, lined up his antiquated wooden speargun, and fired. Successful, Sulbin pushed off from the seafloor and returned once more to his boat with his family’s next meal leaving me bemused and bubbling away with my high tech scuba gear.”

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All Photos ©simonenderby