Recent content by Taylor and Ahbra

Its been a while since we posted anything and with the gem show just around the corner Taylor and I thought we better put up something pretty unique. While we were shooting in Australia one of our pearl farmers, James Brown, took us to a Bardi community celebration in Beagle Bay. While...

Haha we are working as fast as possible! Just in case anyone is interested, today we just finished sorting through 18,000 photos, finalized the organization system for the 20 terabytes of footage we have, and began organizing and syncing clips. This may not seem like a lot, but all we have to do...

As we are getting into our editing process for the film we have started to go through all of our archived material. I though everyone would really be interested in seeing some photos from the beginnings of the farms. This first photo is of a few items salvaged from from the wheelhouse of an...

Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm Cygnet Bay is the only land based operation we visited in Australia. It is located at the northern tip of the Dampier peninsula and the farming is done in one of the last un-touched tropical marine preserves. This is the oldest active farm in WA and...

Apologizes everyone! Taylor and I have been on the road, but we are back now so let the posting continue! One aspect of sustainability on a pearl farm is the "zero waste" from the harvest. After the pearl is removed from the shell everything is cleaned and then the meat is sold or eaten, the...

Back on deck... Back on deck... In this photo Zack Kamen is speaking with Sandra, one of the only female divers on the ship. He is learning how to carefully place shell that have been nucleated into the nets. Even though she is a specialized diver she lends a hand to whatever task needs to be...

Captain Continued Captain Continued After the divers come up with shell it is the Captains job to run down from the wheelhouse and quickly sort all the wild shell. He decides what they will keep and what they throw back. This step will be one of the determining factors for the harvest they...

Wicker, to answer your question about the origin of the above underwater photo of the shell, it is a still taken from a video clip.

Captains on Pearling Vessels Captains on Pearling Vessels Every day captains of the pearling vessels deal with high expectations and have to anticipate unforeseen circumstances to make sure everyone is safe on their ship. Jim, the captain on one of the vessels in Australia, has to make sure he...

Whicker, Yes we take photos and film but not underwater. We only shoot video underwater. The camera is fastened into an underwater housing as you saw before in the picture of Taylor and the whale. Filming underwater is like being on a alien planet. Gravity is non exsistent and sea life is...

Yes they certainly are! Today I thought I would post a photo of one of the wild shells underwater, but it took me a while to find a good image that would put it in perspective. Identifying wild shell on the ocean floor takes highly trained eyes and really clear goggles ;). You can see in this...

Thank you all for voicing your opinions, questions, and of course all the love! It is always a pleasure to post here on PG. To answer your question whicker, present day Australian pearl divers deal with many different hazards with their daily operations. They include dangerous sea life like sea...

Day 4 Day 4 Today check out some photos of the dive operations on the pearling boats. In Australia the diving is different from other countries because they are collecting wild shell to nucleate. The divers are all on a hookah system, a single air compressing unit located on the deck of the...

Day 3 Day 3 The next day we did some filming of the season's first harvest, which you'll see soon, but here is a photo of Taylor setting up to film some sorting of that harvest. Patrick, a manager of Clipper, had just washed the pearls off and was getting ready to lay them out in the bright...

Day 2 Day 2 On our first day headed out to the Trident Aurora, one of the motherships for Clipper and Autore pearls, we were fortunate enough to spot a group of humpback whales in the distance. Naturally, I wanted to get as close as possible, but we were packed with all of our film gear and...