I grew up in Amanzimtoti and I went to school there and often at the
sardine run was happening and I bunked school to go along and watch what was
going on we saw sardines washed up on the beach
we saw the Seine netters it is pulling the sardines in fishermen catching these
awesome fish so when I got into filmmaking around 1990 I decided I would
like to document the sardine run and show people what it's all about I was
never really successful at capturing what goes on underwater so I was in a
discussion with some scientists Dr Vic Peddemors and some good friends Mark
Addison and we decided to go down into the wild coast to find out what happens
there because they're the thin band of water that the sardines
migrate up in is very narrow so the action is concentrated so we launched out
of Mkambati and we had an airplane in the air
finding the action for us and we realized what this was all about
we found all kinds of predators making bait balls
birds diving in sharks dolphins game fish everything preying on the Sardines
we realized what needed to be done so the next year we got a good friend of
mine Rob Allen who had a microlight and we put him in the air because he knew
exactly what to look for we had developed a whole lot of special cameras
to capture the activity underwater
and we really went about filming the Sardine Run and we got amazing stuff we
made a promo which we sent out to different broadcasters which got the cat
amongst the pigeons and the next thing we knew the BBC were there everybody was
there and trying to film the sardine run but we put out our first film in the
year 2000 it was called "The Greatest Shoal on Earth" since then we've made
another three films we believe there's probably a lot more films that can be
made on the subject we've always tried to stay ahead of the curve as far as
understanding what's going on and how to film it with the latest technology and I
think we've probably put together the greatest library on this event that
exists in the world
one two three ... How was it? you won't believe what we've got! like a 100 Dolphins just coming through frame at once