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In the muffled silence, a steady breath-breath. A shadow, then a glimmer of silver. Then, the elusive fascination is fully revealed by the silent, gliding approach: the great white shark.

When underwater filmmaker Ron Elliott dives below the surface, what he’s after is this moment of suspended magic.

I first met Ron more than a decade ago, a few years after I started documenting the undersea world. Farallon Islands, remote, saw-toothed cliffs about 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco. The people of Ohlone Dead Islands; 19th century sailors called them Devil’s Teeth. Farallones, Northern California”red triangle”, where large numbers of great white sharks come to feed on seals and sea lions during the fall and winter.

Ron, a former commercial sea urchin diver, switched from fishing to filmmaking in 2005 when he discovered that he loved watching sharks above all else in this desolate area of ​​the open ocean. He befriended shark researchers stationed on southeast Farallon Island and provided them with new, wild images of the shark population. There, underwater, she finally found a calm and serene beauty. It has become the ecosystem he has adopted.

But in October 2018, he was bitten by a 17-foot female shark and nearly lost his right hand and forearm. the chilling encounter resounding in the diving world. A year later, he was back on the water after many surgeries and hours of grueling physical therapy.

I convinced Ron throughout our friendship. on stage To speak of his long-standing fascination with the Farallones; I even wrote a few months ago book about her. The unusual attraction he felt to swim towards sharks—rather than move away from them like the rest of us—was something I always wanted to understand.

He originally came to diving as a balm for his brain. “For mental aches and pains – it was like taking ibuprofen for my mind,” he said recently. He sobered up from drugs and alcohol in 1975 and soon discovered diving.

In other words: At the time “Jaws” colonized the American spirit, Ron was swimming upstream as a chestnut diver off the coast of California. (He is one of the few to dive around Farallones. without protective cage.) Whales passing by, clouds of blooming krill, long branches of a jellyfish advancing into the inky darkness. He loved them all. Sharks were inquisitive, but when he learned to handle himself in the environment, they left him alone. Fear did not enter the picture.

Over time, Ron began sharing underwater photos and videos with his family, local shark scientists, and eventually similar researchers with National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Now that we’re all trying to get back on the water, I asked Ron, so to speak, to share some of his extraordinary work and talk about what he learned from his time in the ocean.

Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

First of all, how did you overcome your fear of diving with these formidable apex predators?

When I first started diving with the sharks, I had a feeling of invincibility – no matter what. And I still have this feeling to a certain extent when I think only of myself and not of my wife and family. I’m in it right now and I can’t think of anything else. Although I have been in some frightening situations, I challenged myself to be now and observe the size of the sharks and what they are doing.

How has filming sharks changed your perspective?

When the idea of ​​downloading a camera came to my tiny brain, I realized that I wanted to show people the amazing things I saw. I’m starting to think my family would want to know what I was doing there. I always kept it inside. Sharing what I’ve seen with my family, scientists, and researchers has taught me to open up a little.

I am a visual person. When I was working with others and revisiting the video at home, I appreciated it more. I could look at it in slow motion and really suck it in. It would take me back. I could see it differently. So that was very comforting.

You mentioned that spending time with sharks and reviewing footage should be a form of therapy.

Yes it’s okay. I was attached to him. It has been a great motivation for me. Staying close to the water gave me something to look forward to.

The accident didn’t seem to do much to your sense of immunity at first.

Oh, I was ready to go back to the water. from the beginning. The doctor was shaking his head. I thought I could do it really fast. It kept me going – through all the surgeries and rehab.

I wasn’t going to let what happened take away from me what I love to do. I wouldn’t go out like this.

Also, since the shark got away with my 4K camera, I wanted to see if I could actually find it.

But your sense of immunity has started to change over the past year.

I’ve been very lucky over the years with bumps and buzz. However, going through these surgeries, physical therapy and rehabilitation in this pandemic has been very time consuming and stressful. As for the issue, the amount of effort you put in – the good feeling I got from diving was disappearing. I’m thinking of my wife Carol. He never told me to stop diving. He knows how important he is to me. But I’m not so selfish anymore. It has become more of a relationship type decision.

How has your relationship with diving developed over the past three decades at Farallones?

In the early years it was very rare for things to feel really dangerous. I just haven’t had such interactions with animals. What has changed in the last few years is that the sharks have started behaving a little differently towards me. There were more encounters that felt close to something confrontational. I don’t know if it’s about the changes in the ocean, the climate change affecting everything, the purple urchin taking over the seabed, more people cage diving, or me.

Helping my fellow researchers in science and conservation studies has become really important to me. But would I really have a negative impact on the sharks if I had an accident again? Such things will always be sensational because people have such a fear. Will my selfishness harm animals? I don’t want to add to this.

I see sharks and I think they are really good. them developing, even if their habitat has changed. [Warming waters have helped expand the geographic range of great white sharks along the California coast.] Yet being part of their habitat has changed. I feel a little out of place; I don’t see the same. I have had this ecosystem for a while, I was a part of it. I don’t feel like I belong there anymore.

What have sharks taught you about being human?

While in this case there are sharks, we may be talking about a relationship with anyone or anything in life. It began to be purely about me – what I get from things. There is an evolution over time where you put everything and everyone involved into perspective. Life changes. Eventually you have to change. Not everything is the same forever.

You have to adapt, change, and take care of the other people who are there – or the life experience really comes to an end. It gets smaller.

Bonnie Tsui He is the author of the book “Why We Swim”. His new book about Ron Elliott is “Uncertain Sea”.

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