STAN WATERMAN: A Deeper Love

No creature on the land or in the sea compels quite the simultaneous fear and fascination as do sharks. The idea of razor-sharp teeth lurking in the murky depths beneath placid surface waters exerts a horrible attraction for many of us.

Perhaps no man has faced jaws with a camera as often as master underwater cinematographer Stan Waterman. The Discovery Channel launches its Shark Week ’92 on July 12 with “The Man Who Loves Sharks,” a profile of this extraordinary underwater pioneer.

Waterman was one of the first Americans to adopt Jacques Cousteau’s invention, the Aqua Lung, in exploring the underwater world. Soon, Waterman was taking his movie camera beneath the sea to film the wonders he found there. The credits of Waterman, the acknowledged dean of underwater cameramen, include “Blue Water, White Death,” the definitive documentary about sharks, as well as the film “The Deep” and numerous underwater television programs.

“The Man Who Loves Sharks” features plenty of exciting underwater footage of such charismatic sea creatures as whales, manta rays, and sharks, sharks, sharks. “The Man Who Loves Sharks” is, however, more than just another video fest of fins, scales and, of course, jaws. The show could just as accurately be titled “The Man Who Loves Life.”

The central focus of the program is not just on Waterman’s fabled encounters with real-life sea monsters but on his relationship with his family. Writer Noel Davis managed to catch Waterman between underwater expeditions for a conversation about sharks and about the show.

To many people the idea of physically encountering a shark is the most terrifying thing they can imagine. How can you repeatedly go into the water with sharks?

I know something about their behavior as anybody does who works with animals in the wild over a period of time. A relative handful of us who are in the business of underwater cinema work have done a lot of shooting with sharks and have learned much about their behavior patterns and what we can do with them.

They do have predictable behaviors. Over the course of the years of doing documentaries about sharks, I’ve tried to dispel the myth of fear and tell people that we have to work quite hard just to get sharks to come close enough to let us film them. It is well that people learn that sharks are not just waiting to eat them when they jump in the ocean.

What are the dangers you face when you film sharks?

Always underlying the experiences with sharks is the reality that a shark can take you apart at the seams very easily, that you are in his environment and that you are relying on what you think you know about his behavior to gauge how far you can go.

There is always an underlying factor of danger. Just last month a good friend of mine, another underwater camera person, was badly mauled by a shark when the behavior pattern took a turn in the wrong direction. These things can happen.

Valerie Taylor, the famous Australian documentary diver, has been bitten about five times over the years. She and her husband, Ron Taylor, really put themselves in harm’s way to get exciting footage. Understand, though, that all of us love being alive and whole so we don’t court danger. We work within a radius of what we call calculated risk.

In the climactic scene in “The Man Who Loves Sharks,” you and fellow underwater cameraman Howard Hall find yourselves in the midst of sharks in a feeding frenzy. You emerge from the water quite shaken. Why was this particular encounter so frightening?

Visibility was the factor. If you have clear water in which to work, sharks can see you very well. If they see you, they are most likely to avoid you or to avoid an attack.

As far as we can extrapolate what is going on in their instinct-motivated brains, they must see a large strange animal that is not all akin to what they are used to feeding on. Their tendency is to keep their distance and not to just attack. When the visibility goes down the way it did when we were working there and they were excited about feeding, you can get hit by mistake. That was where the danger was.

What is the central message of “The Man Who loves Sharks?

The message, of course, comes across about animal behavior, about sharks both from Howard Hall and myself as we talk straight about the experiences we have. However, as director Nigel Noble edited and developed the show, much more comes out about a family and the pleasure we have in being together.

The show tells the way my children have evolved by being brought into my activity almost from the beginning of their lives. I was overwhelmed when I first saw the way this story was shaping up. When Nigel Noble took this project on under contract to Discovery, he came up to visit us and he went through the great miles of stock footage I gave him of times past. He got this feeling that there was something lovely and charismatic about the family, about my working with the children and making them part of my adventure.

“The Man Who Loves Sharks” airs Sunday at 5 and 10 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.