The Pete Zuccarini Interview

Pete Zuccarini is one of the most sought-after underwater cinematographers in the world. When he's not working on films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Pete works on documentaries like Blood Dolphins. We recently caught up with Pete to asked him a few questions about his experiences working on the series. For more about Pete Zuccarini, visit his bio.

What is your job like as an underwater cinematographer?
I am very happy in the water. The weightlessness, the light and all the fantastic life forms excite me. As a child, with my mask and fins and a waterproof camera, I spent many days exploring the mangroves and sea grasses as if I lived in a great aquatic jungle. Holding my breath, looking up at the sun waiting for eagle rays to swim over me, I became entranced from the beginning. As an underwater cinematographer I try to find ways to make shots and sequences that add a perspective from the water. Not literally, well sometimes literally, but also asking a question "how does the water see this situation?" It is kind of exercise, an esoteric practice I can never actually achieve.

What have been some of your greatest accomplishments in your career?
Hmm. I have been involved with some extraordinarily rewarding and challenging scenarios but have never tried to break it down to "greatest accomplishments" before. When I was making a film about a mother alligator and her hole in the Fakahatchee Strand I spent many days trying to accumulate moments of quirky interaction between the mother, her babies and the rest the creatures that inhabit the Cypress Dome. I managed to keep still, ignoring a wicked deer fly biting my left eye, run the camera in time to film the mother gator responding to her baby's call. She lunged and snapped at a great blue heron just as it was about to swallow her baby. A small moment, but one I relished filming after many days in the swamp.

A challenge that I remember vividly was helping Director Walter Salles and DP Eric Gautier film a lead actor swimming across the real Amazon River at night for the film Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries). We had some unusual challenges to do this safely. The Amazon has many dangerous swirling currents, drifting debris and wildlife. It was an emotionally charged scene in the movie and quite an adventure to photograph in real life.

During the filming for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies director Gore Verbinski would verbally animate the creatures as he imagined they would be moving through my frame as I moved the camera through the water. I would hear in my earpiece things like "the Kraken is coming up from the deep blue... now his tentacle is on the first canon..." I really enjoy doing elements and plates for maestros like Gore Verbinski and visual effects supervisor Charlie Gibson.

More recently I did some water shots for Danny Boyle's new film 127 Hours. I don't want to give away any story points, but I felt very grateful to have the opportunity to contribute, albeit in a very brief scene, to such an authentic psychological masterpiece.

How did you get involved with Blood Dolphins?
Well, it's twofold. I knew Lincoln from childhood growing up on Biscayne Bay, and we were both active boaters and snorkelers. His father I first met... I was making a documentary film on Biscayne Bay and I was working out of a small boat and just looking for wildlife opportunistically. I was in this cove, and I found this group of dolphins who were surprisingly approachable compared to other dolphins I was trying to film in the bay. I ended up getting in the water and getting these really good close-ups of these dolphins doing remarkable things. In one case, a dolphin was playing with a small sea turtle underwater and swam it right near me. The turtle escaped from the dolphin and actually came right to my lens. The dolphin came and took the turtle away from me and swam off with it into the green murk. I was kind of shocked that I was getting all this amazing behavioral interactions between dolphins and wildlife. After a day of doing this, I started to think something was really weird.

The next day, more and more people were showing up because these dolphins were hanging around the area. Then Ric showed up with a couple of other dolphin activists. It turns out this sort of accidental wildlife discovery I was so excited about was actually (a group of) captive dolphins that had been released into the wild — not necessarily by Ric, but by somebody who had cut the fence at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo. But Ric was made aware that there were dolphins that had lived in captivity now living in Biscayne Bay, and he was getting there before the capture crew had come to return them to assess the situation, and then decide how they could best be dealt with.

Once the news got wind of what was going on, it went from my little sleepy cove where I was filming these extraordinary dolphin interactions into a circus of helicopters and news crews. A commercial fishing operation had been hired to recapture the dolphins for the Ocean Reef Club. On the other side, Ric and a handful of other activists — some that were cooperative with him, some that were separate dolphin advocacy groups — were trying to figure out what should happen with these dolphins.

It was my first exposure to dolphin activism. Admittedly I got a little caught up in it because the capture crews seemed intent on capturing the dolphins with no real idea what they were going to be doing next with them except putting them back in the Ocean Reef Club where they were kept as pets for the club members. I had seen them there before and understood that that wasn’t a great environment for dolphins. The activists were hell bent on getting hold of the dolphins and finding a way to set them free. I really didn't understand the ins and outs of how one would accomplish that, but it seemed at the time (I was 21 years old) like a better idea to me.

The activists had arrived there first and were ensuring the health of the dolphins by getting them fed. I guess they had determined they had not been eating well because they weren't adapted to living in the wild after having been in captivity. So they were feeding them for a while to just get their body mass levels back up.

When the capture crews came, the news crew ended up on my boat wanting to get a better look at the dolphins. I, at the time, almost impulsively, sped away with my boat. The dolphins had been patterned to follow my boat since that's how they had been being fed. I led them out around the net successfully and bought another day for the debate as to where these dolphins were going to go next.

So I had a firsthand, accidental immersion in dolphin activism, which I suppose planted a seed in me. Later, I got involved with Ric on filming some of his more clandestine dolphin operations, which I won't really go into too much here. But I had a history of doing some of the operations that Ric had been involved with many years previous to the more publicized documentaries like The Cove.

When Lincoln put together (the Blood Dolphins) TV series with his father, I was a natural fit to work with him because not only had I done some filming with them on their previous activist work, but that I had already had a good relationship with Lincoln spending time in the water.

It sounds like this isn't just a job for you, that you are passionate about dolphin activism. Is that right?
I would say I'm very passionate about dolphin activism as it fits under the umbrella of environmental and wildlife concerns in general. I think that Ric and Lincoln are highly specialized as dolphin activists. I consider myself an activist in a broader sense in that my whole life is 100 percent committed to photographing and trying to advocate for life forms in the ocean in general. Dolphins fit under that umbrella of my concerns and advocacy, whereas Lincoln and Ric are super-refined and specialized at understanding the problems that dolphins face. I’m not an expert at that, but I am extremely committed to being an advocate and activist for all things in the ocean.

What are the risks involved in working on Blood Dolphins?
Being a father and a husband, participating in anything that has a risk is something I weigh for the benefit of my family. The risks that I assessed in getting involved with this were, one, aggravating dolphin dealers or dolphin capturers to the point of them retaliating in some way that would be potentially hazardous, and then secondly, the risks associated with doing any kind of operations or filming in the water. That always has inherent risks because of the possibility of getting injured or drowning in some kind of challenging scenario for filming. So sometimes it involves being in wild ocean scenarios and sometimes it involves dealing with some kind of captive scenario.

The risks that I assessed to be greatest were from some kind of emotional reaction to our group not agreeing with the fundamental principles of the groups that we're documenting and trying to interact with to convince them or persuade them to not capture the dolphins, or in fact to free the dolphins back into the wild.

Discovering a surveillance camera posted in the Cove in Taiji must have been alarming. What was going through your mind at that time?
Well, we went to go evaluate what the status of the Cove was. When we first arrived in Taiji we really didn’t know if the Cove was being prepared for a hunt. We just needed to go and see what the status was.

It was a rough, windy day. We swam around the Cove, and understood as we moved around that there wasn't any actual fishing going on (it would’ve been roped off and boats would've been there). When we turned the corner, there was a big pole with one of those internet camera feeds mounted on it, which I presume was some kind of permanent surveillance based on The Cove having alerted the fishermen that they needed to start paying attention to who else had access to the Cove.

So when we saw this camera, we got a little nervous because we already had had a couple of uncomfortable things go on in Taiji. We were met by the police when we first arrived to assess what our intentions were for being in Taiji. We had already had a couple of uncomfortable encounters with fishermen who recognized Ric. So we were already a little bit on guard that our presence wasn't going to be necessarily welcome in the Cove.

Then there was some kind of fluke event where some kind of alarm went off right as we were staring at this camera. In the end it turned out to be an emergency vehicle or something. But right as we noticed the camera, an alarm went off. So set our hearts racing for being our first five minutes actually deep into the harbor of the Cove. We opted to just leave in case that was going to lead to some kind of trouble for us, but yes, it was exactly the kind of thing you didn't want to happen when you're sneaking around trying to assess the situation.

In the Solomon Islands, you got to spend some time with dolphin trader Chris Porter. What was that like?
Well, Chris is a very complex character. He has been labeled the biggest dolphin trader in the world over the last couple of years, maybe meaning that he has sold the most dolphins to the captive trade than any other individual person. He was an obvious character that we wanted to try and speak with when we got there, to figure out what his future in dolphin trading was going to be and how it related to the group's agenda to curb trading in live dolphins.

And we had a curveball thrown at us. At the last minute, he invited us on to his island where he was holding around 20 dolphins. He'd opened up a website called freethepod.com and said he was ready to come over to the other side and become a person who works to try and free dolphins from captivity. I guess the year or two years previous, Ric had tried to go over to document his operation and was met with a lot of conflict, including a very strong-armed resistance to his helicopter landing on the island, and was treated more of adversary than someone that he would want to speak with.

But this go around, Chris seems to have turned a corner, and I think The Cove had something to do with it because he mentioned his daughters talking to him about The Cove and what the kids were saying at school. He was going through a period of challenging himself as to what he was doing with this life.

When we showed up, Chris was back and forth. He would say things like he was committed to wanting to be part of our team, and wanting to travel around the world, and use his skills as a dolphin trader and capturer to help the effort to stop the live trade in dolphins. And then on the other, he was still proud of what he had achieved in coming to Solomon Islands and opening up a dolphin trade there and helping the local people. He seemed to have a genuine concern for the local people, so that actually was a little confusing for me.

I think for Ric it was really obvious that this guy was still holding dolphins, he was still potentially trading dolphins and he was someone to either be turned or confronted head on. For me, I had gotten there a little before Ric and had some time to bond with him as a human being. I saw that he did have a side to him that was genuinely concerned about the local Solomon Islanders and he was genuinely at odds with himself over whether he was doing the right thing with dolphins. So I saw him as a person that had a lot of potential to aid in the effort that we were participating in.

And we had lots of long talks, and some heated discussions in fact, about the relationship of dolphins in captivity for educational purposes and all the same arguments you hear from zoos about the value of dolphins in captivity. And he was still not really letting go of some of those things, which I think we needed to see because our purpose was to find ways to discontinue dolphin capture in the Solomon Islands for the purpose of live trade.

What's been the most gratifying moment of working on Blood Dolphins?
The most gratifying moment probably was our interaction with the people of Fanalai, which was a longtime dolphin hunting tribe that lived on what ultimately had been a manmade island. (The island) was created hundreds of years ago by a maritime tribe to escape marauder tribes that lived on the main islands. Then (the maritime tribe) culturally developed dolphin hunting as a primary means of survival living on this tiny little island that they made.

Although I found fascinating the methods they used to capture dolphins and the depth to which the tradition played a role in the lives of their oral history, the raising of their children, the teaching of their children, they were at a crossroads where dolphin hunting as a fisher, so to speak, was collapsing. Where they once had hunted dolphins right close to their island, they were now having to travel 20 miles paddling dugout canoes to go find dolphins and bring them back. For the children, it was a big paddle. It was a little dangerous to pass on the tradition to their young.

I think we came into that island right at a good time when they were receptive because of how challenging dolphin hunting was getting to talking about maybe discontinuing dolphin hunting and being receptive to Ric O'Barry and Earth Island Institute and ideas they had for finding alternative means of hunting and survival that could take some pressure off the dolphins. It was very gratifying to see what I thought was going to be a very scary, almost dangerous interaction bringing up the idea of discontinuing the dolphin hunt, but it turned out to be we were very well received and that they were very open to listening and furthering conversations and taking action towards discontinuing the hunt.

So it was very gratifying. I'm not sure what the status is, if the hunt is in fact stopped. I think Lincoln said that it was looking good right now. But it was very gratifying to meet with such a... I almost felt like it was stepping back in time. These people who were living as they had been for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years and, one, just getting to interact with them and speak with them about something we had in common, which was an interest in a particular animal, the dolphin, but then to actually have them be receptive to hearing our views, and us hearing their views, on the dolphin was extremely gratifying.

What's it like working with Ric O'Barry?
Ric has been doing this for a long time. When I first met Ric, I think more than 20 years ago now, he was perceived as a very radical, almost terrorist environmentalist. I say almost, I don't think he was quite perceived that way. Over the years, he has chosen his battles and become very refined, and very articulate at voicing his concerns over dolphin captivity and dolphin capture.

And he's really become a guru about the whole process of how dolphins change when they’re put in captivity and how they can be possibly returned to the wild, or not. He has a very cool level-headedness about him where every dolphin in captivity isn't a candidate for release to him now. He understands some dolphins that have suffered a certain amount of damage from having been in captivity, he advocates now — rather than a return to the wild — a retirement from serving humans for entertainment, to give them the best life possible after having been tainted by their life serving people for entertainment purposes, or for whatever purposes they were being used.

You go into this activism thinking you're going to deal with all kinds of conflict and wild passion and emotion. Ric's quite the opposite. He's extremely reserved, very cautious about what language he uses and is someone that you look to for holding the line, having a foundation and staying cool under pressure. I guess that would sum up the way I perceive him.

What's one of the most unforgettable moments you've had so far working on Blood Dolphins?
Of the things I've seen so far in my travels with Blood Dolphins, one of the things that was most intriguing to me, maybe not the most gratifying, but the most intriguing thing I've witnessed so far was:

The day after an agreement was signed between Ric and Earth Island and the Fanalai tribal chiefs to temporarily suspend, with the intent to possibly permanently suspend, dolphin hunting, there was a celebration. They did a dance that was actually a dance they did in a very traditional, formal way, actually giving their dolphins to Ric O'Barry in a ritualistic way. It was very emotional for everyone involved, including the islanders and our group.

The next morning we woke up and some dolphins came past their island. There's not as many dolphins coming right past the island as there used to be because they've killed them off. But a big pod of dolphins swam by, and out of instinct, one of the young men does the dolphin call — the call that there are dolphins. It was a call to action to go hunting them.

It was a bloodcurdling call. I can't even begin to imitate this call, but when I heard it, it stopped me in my tracks. When I listened to it over and over again, and someone said that's the call to go hunt dolphins basically, I realized... It was like a war call and it was so passionate, and it was so impressive in the sense that that call was to activate people to go hunt dolphins, which are what they survived on.

No one jumped into their boats. They all ran to the beach, and some others started to do the call. It was really intense because we had just had this whole ritual to let go of dolphin hunting, and everyone in the island knew, but their instincts were such that they couldn't help but call to go hunt dolphins. No one got in their boats and they all understood from the night previous that they weren't going to go hunt them.

It was really intense because you knew that, OK, at least for today they weren't going to hunt dolphins, but the fervor and the passion that came through that call made me realize what we were up against here. I don't even know how to relate to it, but your most impassioned sporting event call, or any of the things you've seen people frenzy over, was described in just that one person's call. It was from deep in the spine that this call came. It really made an impression on me.