Name: Burt Jones & Maurine Shimlock
Web Site: http://www.secretseavisions.com
Bio: Burt Jones and Maurine Shimlock are award-winning marine life photographers whose assignments have taken them around the world to portray diverse subjects including the world's longest underwater cave in Mexico and nesting sea snakes in Borneo. And, they were pioneers in publicizing the wealth of scuba diving opportunities in Indonesia, especially the Komodo area. Their photographs have been published internationally, and Secret Sea, a collection of their photographs, was honored with the Benjamin Franklin award as the best book printed world wide. Burt and Maurine's lively and informative teaching style and their "Stop Taking Pictures and Start Creating Images" seminar have helped thousands of marine life photographers improve their techniques. Burt and Maurine are renowned "critter spotters" and their images often reveal habits and habitats of creatures many people never see for themselves. Since June 2008 they have been based in Bali while on assignment for Conservation International. Burt and Maurine's long-term project is to explore, photograph and produce guidebooks for the remote and uncharted dive sites around Papua's Bird's Head Peninsula including Raja Ampat and Triton Bay. Their recently published book Diving Indonesia's Raja Ampat is the definitive guide to that area and is available thru Undercurrent's Books.
Posts by Burt & Maurine
Who Owns You?
December 19th, 2011
True story: A couple has a great time on a liveaboard trip due mainly to the considerate and knowledgeable guidance of the cruise director. The couple wants to remain in contact with the cruise director so they exchange email addresses. After finishing his contract, the cruise director decides to begin his own travel program. He sends out a trip announcement for a trip on another liveaboard (same country), and the couple that knew him from the original liveaboard joins this trip. They have a fantastic trip. But the ex-cruise director just made two enemies: his former employers and the original booking agent, who both who accuse him of “stealing” their clients.
Times are hard everywhere. It’s an especially tough market for dive travel when disposable income for things like vacations is not flowing like it did back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is a niche market with small profit margins and an even smaller population of divers worldwide who can afford the higher end dive trips.
There is a lot of competition for clients, and it’s getting a bit ugly. People like that former cruise director and even people like Burt and I wear a few different hats just to make ends meet. So the other day, when a friend called and asked us to work as a guide for a private client who had chartered a local liveaboard and was bringing a group of friends to Indonesia, we were delighted. That is until the owner of the boat said he didn’t want us there. He was afraid we’d steal his clients.
Taken aback we declined the offer, but since this idea of “stealing” a client that “belonged” to someone else had cropped up again it made me wonder how someone who goes on a dive trip belonged to the agent who booked him on the trip or even to the person who owned the dive operation? What about all the different places someone has dived? What about the probable multiple dive travel agents that he has dealt with? Did they each own a piece of him? Hell, what about freedom of choice?
We often team up with other people to teach photography courses during their trips, and we occasionally guide private clients. We do not actively solicit email addresses while working with someone else. If we happen to be on a boat or at a resort that we have been invited to without our own group, or when we are working with other trip leaders we will direct people to our web site if asked about our own travel programs.
I wonder if you, the diving public, are aware of what goes on behind the scenes in this very competitive market. Do you feel wedded to the agent who booked your trip or the boat or resort you visited? What about cruise directors and group leaders?
I am not particularly comfortable with the direction that all of this competition may be driving us, and hope that it does not become a trend. (In all fairness, there are many agents and dive operators who do not feel like they “own” their clients.) While I understand that traveling divers are always on the lookout for the next new thing and that destinations rise and fall like tidal changes, I also believe that “clients” should be recognized and treated as valued “guests” who come and go of their own free will.
Stormy Weather
May 25th, 2011
The weather has been in the news lately. Between earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, fires, tornadoes and so forth, everyone has been affected by the unpredictable nature of the planet’s weather. I can’t remember whether it is supposed to be a La Niña or El Niño year, but out here in Indonesia the weather has been very erratic, except in its unwavering atrociousness.
The water along the southern coast of the archipelago has been so unseasonably cold that several boats just blew off diving some of the better critter spots near Pantar Island. In Papua, it has rained steadily throughout the “dry” season. Visibility was off everywhere due to surge, waves, and storms. In early April we were supposed to meet our liveaboard in Ambon, and then cross the Banda Sea to Raja Ampat. But things were so bad out there that we had to reroute and only dive in Raja Ampat, which has decent protection in just about any weather. When you hear about waves several meters high and winds blowing a gale, you don’t second guess the captain. You just go with his judgment even if it means that you’ll disappoint a few clients, miss a few dives. There are things we can do something about, and there are things that we can’t fix. Weather, water temperature, and visibility come to mind.
We weren’t the only people trying to cross the Banda Sea a few weeks ago. There was a small boat with just six guests that was trying to move southeast between Banda and Alor. Even though the captain was instructed not to leave harbor, the guests raised such a fuss about not being able to dive where they had planned, that the crew chanced it. This boat ended up drifting far from its intended arrival port and finally had to make port in another country. We heard that the everyone including the guests on board were imprisoned because they did not have the proper entry papers, nor did they have documentation from their embarkation port.
If the weather does not cooperate during a dive trip everyone suffers. The crew works exceedingly hard to make things comfortable and to offer as many dives as possible. Think about the cooks (the toughest job on any boat) who have to spend hours in a boiling hot galley, preparing meals that no one is likely to eat if the seas are really rough. The group leaders will probably be out a bit of profit because they bought several rounds of drinks to soothe their unhappy clients. The guests are mostly miserable because this is their vacation, they paid a lot of money to dive, and their expectations have not been met. If this trend (climate change, anyone?) continues, we might need an “unseasonable weather” clause on future release forms.
Under the most adverse conditions, most crews and guests pull together and cooperate as best they can. A blown out trip can result in a good group bonding experience, but not always. There was the time we were on a liveaboard in Vanuatu. Two days out of Port Vila a cyclone moved in and we were forced to seek shelter in the nearest, safest bay. For two days the storm rampaged through the islands while the guests and crew argued among themselves. The cruise directors made their nasty marital problems all too public, two of the most outspoken guests declared undying hatred toward each other, and we ran out of beer and videos within 48 hours. By the middle of the third day, Burt and I were so fed up we put on tanks and pulled ourselves down the anchor chain. There we rested in blessed solitude, hearing only the sounds of our own breathing while the storm continued to rage overhead.
No Contest
March 30th, 2011
We have taken a long break from blogging because we’re putting together an updated version of the Raja Ampat dive guide we produced for Conservation International. The new book will encompass all the of the Bird’s Head Seascape, so it’s larger and more time consuming to write and illustrate. But we were interested to read the lead article in the latest Undercurrent, the one about Raja Ampat, which must have provoked lots of discussion about the best place to dive. The article and Dave Eagleray’s comments certainly provoked some discussion around our house, so we decided to comment. This blog is not about defending Raja Ampat or even where our favorite place to dive might be. This is about the fact that wherever you like to dive is the best place.
Our best friend Vickie (she introduced me and Burt so we have a very long term friendship) has been diving about as long as we have. Whenever she takes time away from her busy career, she goes diving. She has the means to travel wherever she wants, and she has known us for over 30 years so she has heard about most of the world’s best dive spots. She could have dived with us in Sipadan, Komodo, the Solomons, wherever, but Vickie always goes to the same place: Cozumel. Why? Because she likes it! To her Cozumel is relaxing, easy to get to, and offers plenty of diving, but not enough to get in the way of spending a few evenings partying in town. We don’t argue with her about her choice of destination, and we’ve stopped trying to get her to join us in some faraway, exotic place. We’re just happy she’s diving and loving it.
Another good friend recently gave up diving. He also has the means to travel wherever he wants, go on any liveaboard no matter what the cost. So why did he stop? Because the only place he liked to dive was Cocos, and after more than 30 trips there (!), he said he was done. No, he never saw Raja Ampat or Lembeh or the Solomons either. Just not enough sharks to suit him in those places. Hard to argue with that.
Some of us don’t mind traveling to the ends of the earth to dive on pristine reefs, see masses of fish, or even hunt for a new species of nudibranchs. Some of us only want to see sharks. Some of us want our diving as easy and accessible as possible so we can enjoy a few hours of uninterrupted silence while floating weightlessly in the blue. There are professional photographers we know who say they will never come back to Raja Ampat because the viz was terrible or there wasn’t enough macro to suit them. There are others who will not go back to Sulawesi because macro is all they were able to shoot and they expected schools of fish in clear water. We don’t argue with them because everyone has their own reasons for diving in a particular spot.
Folks, there’s no contest here. The beauty of sport diving is that it’s really about what floats your boat, what best satisfies your individual expectations, not which reef is the most diverse or which site has the highest fish species count. (Believe me, the scientists argue enough about that for all of us.) So, if you take a leap and travel beyond your comfort zone in the spirit of adventure, let it be just that and enjoy the thrill of the unknown. Don’t frustrate yourself by constantly equating one place with another. Sure we all have our favorites, but by comparing numbers of reef fish to numbers exotic critters to numbers of pelagics, we’re basically comparing apples and oranges. Personally we like both.
The Pleasure is All Ours: Thoughts on Touching Wild Animals
November 1st, 2010
We experienced a very interesting incident a few weeks back during our survey of Cenderawasih National Park. We were there to explore sites for a new dive guide to the Bird’s Head Seascape, which will include Cenderawasih, Raja Ampat and Triton Bay. Fifteen thousand-square kilometer Cenderawasih is Indonesia’s largest marine park and, for the moment, the biggest attraction is its resident whale shark population. Yes, resident. According to fishermen in Kwatisore, a smaller bay within Cenderawasih, the whale sharks are there all year long. It seems that the fishermen believe whale sharks bring good luck, so they feed them small, anchovy-like fish called ikan puri. The sharks show up just before dawn, circling their boats for hours, almost like pets waiting for a handout.
But the largest fish in the ocean is not a pet. In fact, whale sharks are endangered and have been on the CITES Appendix II list for nearly a decade. I was quickly reminded of this when a crew member grabbed one of the Cenderawasih shark’s dorsal fin and began stroking it while the shark slurped the fish being tossed overboard. Titus, the park ranger traveling with us, went ballistic. I didn’t catch all of the conversation (my Bahasa Indonesia is still limited), but the gist of it was, “Are you crazy? You aren’t supposed to touch the wildlife!”
Who knew that a desire to feed and touch wildlife transcended cultural boundaries? I thought it was only something that privileged, bored westerners wanted to do. Apparently not, but I still do not understand what is it about getting close to a wild, albeit gentle, animal that makes humans from all walks of life try to physically interact with it. What ever happened to gazing in distant wonderment? I realize that for decades this discussion has taken up many pages in scuba publications, but to me it is still unresolved.
The way we relate to animals says a lot about us. A long while back humans went beyond the point where just observing nature was enough. We wanted to be entertained by “wild” animals, hence diving donkeys, circuses and Sea Worlds. But, the animals appearing in these venues can hardly be called wild. They are performers, even though they misbehave at times. I’m not a fan of shows like these. I restrain myself from staging midnight rescue missions at dolphin theme parks by rationalizing that the captive animal performers are really ambassadors, representatives of the real thing, who fulfill a valuable function by acquainting humans with creatures they otherwise might not have an opportunity to see, even if the contact is made in far from natural surroundings.
I think “see” is the operative word. Some of us are lucky enough to spend a good bit of time in wild places and we have the chance to observe a lot of animals that live freely. People who don’t scuba dive, camp in Yellowstone, go on safari, and so forth have to get their nature fix wherever they can, even if it takes place in a controlled situation. That still doesn’t give us license to cross boundaries. We are ambassadors, too.
On the one hand, physically interacting with a wild animal presents a rare opportunity, mainly for us. On the other hand, these interactions probably harm the animal unintentionally, of course. I won’t go into all the reasons why: damaging their skin’s mucous layer, changing behavior patterns, and just plain old interfering with nature when we shouldn’t. If there is even the slightest possibility that our actions may hurt the animal, why do we do it? Is it a master of the universe kind of thing, or are we just not thinking of anything beyond the one-sided pleasure of an interspecies moment?
In Praise of Older Divers
September 7th, 2010
Both of us hit the big 60 a few months back. We didn’t think it mattered much, we felt great and have stayed in shape between dive trips by swimming, hiking, and practicing yoga. Besides, as our friend Brian Skerry so tactfully reminded us, “60 is the new 59.” Encouraging words indeed.
But just after Burt’s birthday we came down with dengue fever. There’s no doubt you are sick when dengue hits. Blinking my eyelids, even breathing at times, felt like way too much effort. According to our friends living in Bali (seems the disease has become a right of passage among Bali’s expat population), having dengue meant a recovery time of at least two months, probably longer. It took me about two weeks to even feel like getting out of bed, much less taking a short walk or swimming a few laps in the pool. All of a sudden we felt and looked our age.
Problem was we were scheduled to lead a dive trip to Komodo National Park, and while we very much wanted to get back in the water, we had doubts about our strength and abilities. Then we spent some time with Gladys Howard. Gladys is the owner of Pirates Point on Little Cayman, and as her almost 25 years in the dive industry prove, she is one unstoppable lady. She’s 78 and has had two knee replacement surgeries, an artificial joint in one of her fingers, and a lot of shoulder problems. She went with us to Komodo and planned on completing 20 dives. She made 23, including a few in Komodo’s famously unpredictable currents. The dragon walk on Rinca Island worried her a bit; it’s a hotter-than-hell two-hour walk over rough ground. She completed the whole walk, and motivated two 17-year-olds to finish when they wanted to turn back. Throughout the trip Gladys amazed us with her energy and attitude, and diving turned out to be just what we needed to feel physically and mentally healed. Dengue brings a bit of depression with it, and dengue patients are especially susceptible because they spending so much time lying around. Just watching an incredible reef scene unfold while we floated through Komodo’s “Fish Bowl” with the mantas was the perfect antidote for our dengue-induced blues.
Gladys isn’t the only “older” diver we’ve encountered lately. Naomi Stern and Mary Jane Stoll (both a decade or two beyond 60) are inspirations. On our last trip together I believe Mary Jane logged more dives than I did! There are quite a few of us hovering just beyond the 60 year old mark, and most are exceptionally active people. It’s hard to believe Howard Hall is 60 after witnessing his marathon rebreather dives during the filming of Under the Sea 3D, Deep Sequel. By the time you read this post, Burt and I will be on an exploratory survey of Cendrawasih Bay, a remote part of Papua’s Bird’s Head Seascape. Dr Gerry Allen (well over 60) will be on board as part of the science team. Despite a bone-crushing run in with a kangaroo while bicycling downhill (really!) and various and sundry mountain climbing falls, Gerry is still lives to be “out there” on the cutting edge of topical fish research. I think it’s important to remember that experience counts in scuba diving; experienced divers make fewer mistakes; they understand and respect their limits.
The people we know who are “getting better”, not older, stay in shape in order to dive. For some, like Howard Hall and Gerry Allen, their living depends on it. For others like Gladys, Naomi or Mary Jane, diving makes their lives worth living and keeps them on the active list. Don’t stop diving just because you don’t feel like making five dives a day like you did a few years ago. Enjoy three and have a scotch after dinner. Don’t stop diving because your back and knees can’t take climbing the ladder in full gear. Hand it off, and save your energy for the next dive. After all, age does come with a few privileges!
