Evidence

Friday May 11, 2007

I’ve never really kept a journal or diary before, but I think this is a good time to try it out. I just got a job with National Geographic as a photographer and I am being sent out on my first job that will be published. I will be traveling with four other team members from National Geographic to do filming and photography for a documentary on wildlife in the arctic. I’ve worked so hard for this kind of opportunity. Finally my name and work on a major publication. I can just see it now; The Arctic In Spring – Photography by Kyle Roberts. This is a major leap for me from doing photography at Sea World six months ago.
I attended the New England School of Photography in Boston, Massachusetts where in my free time from classes I made money doing promo photos and live photos of punk and hardcore bands around the New England area. Then I discovered a great fascination with taking pictures of all the animals at the new Boston Aquarium. I spent much of my free time there, and soon some of my work ended up being displayed in the aquarium. I soon got a part time gig doing photography for them. My work there is what helped me get a job at sea world when I finished school.
For the next four years I worked a wonderful at job at Sea World. It was such a great experience. I loved photographing the penguins especially. But I knew I wanted something more professional and with more adventure. Traveling is one my biggest passions and if I could get paid to travel and photograph then really, what else could I want in life?
Working for National Geographic had been something I’d day dreamed of, but never thought would ever be a reality. Then one summer some people National Geographic came to Sea World to do filming, photography and get information about our orca whales for an upcoming special on whales. It was then I met Nancy Spears, one of the top writers for National Geographic. She saw some of my photography, and asked me to help out with the photography they were doing over the next couple weeks at Sea World. The next thing I know, National Geographic was calling me to talk about working for them as a full time photographer. Within a month, I packed up everything in my apartment in Orlando and moved to Tampa where the National Geographic offices were located.
I haven’t really had any big jobs yet, just small things around the southern states, and doing a lot of grunt work at the office. I guess that comes with being the new guy though. But that finally changed about two weeks ago when I was informed I was going to be going out on an assignment to do photography for an article/television special about wild life in the arctic. I’m leaving tomorrow morning, and couldn’t be more excited. I have never been to the arctic, and I can’t believe I’m finally going to get the opportunity to see some amazing animals in their natural habitat. Especially the penguins and orca whales; those were my favorite to work with at Sea World, I can’t imagine how much better it’s going to be to work them in the wild.
I probably should stop writing and try to get some sleep tonight. We are leaving at 5 AM for a boat docked in Boston.
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Monday May 14, 2007 – 4 PM
After a whole day of driving, a very long day of driving, we finally arrived in Boston after over 24 hours. Without a minute’s rest we got right on the boat and set out on our trip north to the arctic. Lucky for us the boat trip will take about five days, so we were able to get some rest as soon as we settled into our quarters on the boat. After getting rested up, we woke up this morning and had an outstanding sausage and eggs breakfast cooked by the Captain’s wife.
After breakfast I set out to explore the boat and take some photographs. We’re using a fishing boat like you would see on that show on the Discovery Channel, Deadliest Catch. The crew is taking a week off from fishing and getting paid by National Geographic to get us to the arctic and back. There are a lot of great picture opportunities on the boat; the crew at work, all the fishing crates stacked up, water crashing against the side of the boat, I even got some shots of dolphins swimming ahead of the nose of the boat.
We then had lunch and it was a good time to sit down with everyone on the boat and learn about each other. All together there are 11 of us on the boat. Five of us make up the team from National Geographic and the other six are the crew members on the boat. The team from National Geographic is me taking care of photography, Nancy Spears who is the journalist and writer for the special on the arctic, Seth Price doing filming and sound, and Marshall Smith, an explorer who has been to the arctic multiple times and was hired to be our guide for the trip to show us around and make sure we stay out of danger. Then there is John Howe, who is filming all the video footage for the documentary.
* * * *
Saturday May 20, 2007
We’ll be pulling into the arctic in just about an hour. I’m quite anxious to get off this boat. It was fun at first exploring and photographing but got very old after about a day. There are really only so many places you can go on a fishing boat. Solid ground is also sounding pretty nice; I didn’t really enjoy waves rocking the boat constantly, it quite hard to steady a camera with that going on.
I did take an interesting picture just a few minutes ago. I saw a large shadow in the water and snapped a few shots of it hoping it was a whale and would breach and give me a bit of a head start on my work on pictures of the wildlife. Unfortunately it never surfaced whatever it was. It was quite large; it looked to be about the size of the boat.
3 PM
The trip has gone terribly wrong, terribly fast. We still don’t know what happened. We were about a mile from shore when boat was suddenly rocked violently. We quickly started taking on water. The boat crew got four of us from the team (Nancy, Marshall, Seth, and myself) onto a lifeboat and sent us to shore. We are now on shore waiting for the boat crew and John who stayed on the boat with the crew to meet up with us on shore. We are with limited gear; I was able to grab my backpack with some clothes in it, my camera, random food rations, and my laptop.
5 PM
It’s been two hours since we arrived on shore and no one from the rest of the crew has arrived from the boat wreck. The four of us on shore are starting to get quite worried. Not only could lives have been lost, but we have no way of contacting anyone for help.
To help keep my mind off the present situation I’ve been looking through the photographs I have taken so far. I keep studying the last picture I took; the one of the large shadow in the water. The shadow appears too big to be most whales in the arctic waters. The only species of shark that could be this big is the bowhead whale although a bowhead swimming alone is almost unheard of. The shadow appears to be about 50-60 feet. Also, the rear fin is upright, like a shark, not flat like a whale. There are only eight known species of sharks in arctic waters, and none of them are this big. It may just be the waves distorting the shadow and making things appear differently then they are.
6 PM
It is getting dark now and still no sign of the rest of the crew. It’s been foggy all day so we’ve been unable to see out on the water to see if anything is going on, and now with night setting in we don’t know what to do. I think Marshall and I are going to take our lifeboat back out the wreck to see what’s going on.
Saturday May 21, 2007
We’ll be pulling into the arctic in just about an hour. I’m quite anxious to get off this boat. It was fun at first exploring and photographing but got very old after about a day. There is really only so many places you can go on a fishing boat. Solid ground is also sounding pretty nice, I didn’t really enjoy waves rocking the boat constantly, it quite hard to steady a camera with that going on.
I did take an interesting picture just a few minutes ago. I saw a large shadow in the water and snapped a few shots of it hoping it was a whale and would breach and give me a bit of a head start on my work on pictures of the wildlife. Unfortunately it never surfaced, whatever it was. It was quite large, it looked to be about the size of the boat.
3 PM
The trip has gone terribly wrong, terribly fast. We still don’t know what happened. We were about a mile from shore when boat was suddenly rocked violently. We quickly started taking on water. The boat crew got four of us from the team (Nancy, Marshall, Seth, and myself) onto a lifeboat and sent us to shore. We are now on shore waiting for the boat crew and John who stayed on the boat with the crew to meet up with us on shore. We are with limited gear, I was able to grab my backpack with some clothes in it, my camera, random food rations, and my laptop.
5 PM
It’s been two hours since we arrived on shore and no one from the rest of the crew has arrived from the boat wreck. The four of us on shore are starting to get quite worried. Not only could lives have been lost, but we have no way of contacting anyone for help.
To help keep my mind off the present situation I’ve been looking through the photographs I have taken so far. I keep studying the last picture I took; the one of the large shadow in the water. The shadow appears too big to be most whales in the arctic waters. The only species of shark that could be this big is the bowhead whale although a bowhead swimming alone is almost unheard of. The shadow appears to be about 50-60 feet. Also, the rear fin is upright, like a shark, not flat like a whale. There are only eight known species of sharks in arctic waters, and none of them are this big. It may just be the waves distorting the shadow and making things appear differently then they are.
6 PM
It is getting dark now and still no sign of the rest of the crew. It’s been foggy all day so we’ve been unable to see out on the water to see if anything is going on, and now with night setting in we don’t know what to do. I think Marshall and I are going to take our lifeboat back out the wreck to see what’s going on.
Sunday May 20, 2007
Marshall and I went out to the wreck around 6:30 PM last night. The trip took an
even more tragic turn at that point. We found no one alive, no bodies to recover or anything. There were random pieces of the boat floating in the water. It looked like some of the wreckage had massive bites taken out of it; bites that could only belong to a shark. We returned to shore after about an hour as it was starting to get too dark to search the waters anymore. we are going to return tomorrow afternoon when we have more light and warmth to aid our search.
For now we have set up some tents that seth was able to recover before coming ashore, and we have started a fire to keep warm and boil snow to have drinkable water. we have a limited supply of energy bars and instant macaroni and cheese to eat. I figure if we run out of that food before we are able to get out of the arctic we can try tohuntpenguins and cook them over the fire. I am sure that isn’t exactly what National Geographic had in mind for us to do while we were here. But if it’s a means of survival
it’s something I’m willing to do.

* * * *
Monday May 21, 2007
Today marshall and I made another trip out to the wreck site to search for any sign of a survivor, or clues as to what happened. We would have loved to find some radio equipment to try and contact someone to rescue us, but all the radio equipment has sunken into the ocean and is now useless. What we did find today though gave us some
more insight to what happened. We found a severed hand holding onto a piece of boat wreckage. The hand belonged to John as we found his wedding band on his ring finger. We still found no sign of any other bodies. The big find today was a tooth lodged into the same piece of wreckage we found John’s hand on. The tooth definitely belongs to a
shark, but is much too large to belong to any shark that exists today. I have seen this tooth before however. It belongs to a shark known as Carcharodon Megalodon or just Megalodon. The largest shark ever known to exist. Full grown it was believed to reach upwards of 50 feet and weigh 60 tons. It however is believed to have gone extinct 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Though some scientists and shark enthusiasts have always held onto a shred of hope that it still existed somewhere. I never believed it could still exist, but maybe I was wrong. The shadow in the photo I took is the right size, and now I have a fresh tooth, not just a fossil, that is a perfect fit for a megalodon. It would
also explain the massive bite marks on the pieces of the boat wreck.
* * * *

Tuesday May 22, 2007
This discovery of a once thought extinct shark had me up all night. I realized this trip could be more important than anyone ever imagined. I am now presented with an opportunity to document and show to the world a species science told us was extinct. Something like this has never been done before. That is if we can even get out of the arctic alive.
The rest of the crew was a little apprehensive about this endeavor at first, they weren’t as sold on the idea that a megalodon still existed as I was. But I showed them the photograph of the shadow, the tooth I found, and Marshall could attest to the size of the bite marks on wreckage pieces. Finally they decided they wanted to take part in
documenting this amazing animal.
I am going to spend the next few days exploring the waters and finding spots where the shark is likely to be seen and can be documented. The rest of the crew is going to work on preparing equipment to document the shark.

* * * *

Friday May 25, 2007
After spending a few days searching the waters near our camp and the boat wreck site, I think I may have found a promising location. There is a very large underwater cave about a mile from our campsite. I inspected the cave a little closer and found many body parts from penguins, seals, whales and other animals. But what clued me into this
cave housing the shark was the discovery of what I’m sure is human body parts. I found what looks like human ribs and a spine. I just need to actually see the shark, and then figure out the patterns of when he or she comes and goes, so we can determine a good time to try and document the shark. Luckily I was able to find a few oxygen tanks
and some scuba gear in the wreckage of the boat that were full and still good to be used. So we will be able to spend a good amount of time underwater without having to come up for air.

* * * *

Monday May 28, 2007
A few days of waiting and watching has paid off. More than I ever expected. Sunday afternoon, I took the life raft out to the area above the cave and put on goggles and a snorkel and watched the cave from the life raft with my face submerged in the water. What I saw today was something more incredible then I have ever experienced. After
about a half hour of watching a shark emerged from the cave. This shark however was smaller than the megalodon that attacked our boat, but it was still larger than a full grown great white shark, and soon another smaller shark followed behind it, and then two full grown megalodons came out from the cave. Not only had a megalodon survived through time, there was a whole family of them.

* * * *

Thursday May 31, 2007
After I had discovered there was a family of megalodons and where they lived, we spent a couple days at camp preparing for the dive to document them. We had brought cameras on the trip for underwater shooting with penguins and any whales we may have encountered. Never dreamed we’d be using the equipment to film a once believed extinct species of shark.
I would be handling the photography, Seth was taking care of the video filming and Nancy was tagging along to experience it and put it into words after we were able to document the sharks. Marshall dove with us also to be an extra set of eyes and hands in case things got out of our control. And with sharks measuring upwards of 50 feet, things could easily go wrong real fast. And with the way the first leg of this trip had gone, we wouldn’t have been surprised if things got worse; and it certainly did get worse.
We made out our way out to the spot above the cave, and one by one put our regulators in our mouths and dove into the icy waters to take on what could be the most important documentation of our careers. I swam down to a safe spot about 60 yards from the cave so we could observe the sharks coming and going without being noticed hopefully. The rest of the team showed up quickly up after me, and we synchronized our watches for a 30 minute dive to begin with, and prepared our cameras to begin filming.
We filmed for a good 10 minutes without a sign of anything. The mouth of the cave remained as lifeless as the copses of animals in front of it. I looked down at my watch to see how much time was left in this first dive, when I felt a hand suddenly grip my shoulder and shake me. Startled I turned and look behind me to see a look in Nancy’s eyes that showed amazement and terror. I quickly turned my head back to the cave to see one of the smaller sharks had come out and was curiously exploring the area near the mouth of the cave. This is what we had been waiting for, my heart was beating out of my chest, all my years of schooling, and work before this moment had all led up to this moment and I never dreamed I would experience a moment this big.
As the first shark that appeared continued to explore area around the cave for around 5 minutes, the other smaller shark soon joined it in its exploration. The two engaged in a game of almost tug of war with what was left of what looked to be an orca whale. They soon moved on from that and swam off out of sight. We all looked at each other, not sure if we should stay and hope to film more or call it good for now and come back later. We all signaled in agreement we couldn’t stop now and wait some more in hopes of getting more incredible footage. Not long after, the mother megalodon slowly came out of the cave, most likely looking for where the young sharks had gone off to. We were finally getting an adult megalodon on film; this is what we were really after. The shark slowly and cautiously swam around the area for around 10 minutes. We all remained as still as possible, and I’m not sure whether it was to keep from being noticed or just the shock of what we were seeing.
The mother shark soon returned to the cave. I decided we should move in closer and get a different shooting angle. I went ahead of the group and scouted out a good spot. As excited as I was, in the back of my mind I couldn’t shake the fear of coming face to face with the jaws of a shark that completely dwarfed a great white shark. What if we got too close? What if we make a wrong move? These were risks we all agreed we were willing to take in order to get this footage.
I finally found a spot I felt was close, but yet safe for us to remain undetected. I turned back around to signal to the rest of the team to head over. I looked over to Marshall and saw a large dark object in the water behind him. It was growing closer and bigger as it approached, soon it took on a recognizable shape and I knew our worst fears were about to be realized. We had been noticed by the sharks. Worst of all, we hadn’t been discovered by the smaller sharks or the mother, but the male shark, the largest of the family and he had a death lock on Marshall. I signaled for Marshall to get out of the area, he turned and saw the shark coming and started to swim back towards the life boat. Seth and Nancy quickly followed suit and made their way to the life boat as quick as they could. I watched as Marshall swam his hardest, but was unable to out swim the almost 60 foot shark. Its jaws ripped his oxygen tank right off him, he was quickly disoriented. He tried to gain his composure, but the shark lunged for him again, this time taking most of his right leg.
By now I had begun swimming towards Marshall in the hopes of somehow saving him. He had brought a spear gun down with him in case of an emergency such as this. He didn’t have time to react and use it though. I had seen it fall from his shoulder in the attack and quickly searched the ground and found it snagged on a rock. I grabbed it and took aim at the shark’s eye. It was tearing me apart knowing I was about to shoot at a species everyone else believed was extinct, but I wasn’t about to let Marshall lose his life for the rest of us. The spear left the gun with such tremendous force it knocked me back and spun me around. I turned back around just in time to see the spear had struck the shark just below the eye and now he was distracted enough for me to grab Marshall and get us to the life boat.
Waiting for us to arrive back at the life boat were Seth and Nancy. We carefully got Marshall onto the life boat and used what clothing we could to wrap up the wound on what was left of his right leg. He was losing a lot of blood, and real fast. He looked paler than anything I had ever seen, if it wasn’t for him breathing I wouldn’t have thought he was alive.
We made it back to shore and to the campsite with out any further set backs. Marshall is resting as comfortably as we can possibly get him right now. We’re keeping a very close watch on him though with the mix of the cold weather and the shock setting in, he could go downhill any moment. To keep a continuous watch over Marshall we are all sleeping in shifts so while two sleep, one is taking care of Marshall.
Speaking of sleep, I need to try and get some while it is my turn to sleep, instead of writing this journal. Tomorrow will bring another update.
* * * *
Friday June 1, 2007
It seems we are facing everything that can go wrong. During Seth’s shift of watching over Marshall last night, Marshall passed away in his sleep. Seth said Marshall was trying to say something to him and Seth could tell he was fading, he went to wake us to help him, but Marshall took his hand and his last words were “Just let me go.” This has really brought the three of us down, especially Seth since he had to watch him go. We were all very excited about the footage we got, despite the drastic turn it took at the end, and we all were motivated to find a way out of here as soon as possible. We still want out of here as soon as possible, but it doesn’t feel the same, there is a sense of anger and bitterness in the air now.
* * * *
Saturday June 2, 2007
I’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re doing; documenting these sharks and showing them to world. Is it really right? Sure it would most likely be the greatest achievement in our careers, the world would be in astonishment that an extinct species had actually survived over time and was still reproducing, but at what cost? How long before poachers come looking for these sharks to kill them and sell their fins, teeth, meat for outrageous prices that people would pay just to say they have a piece of a once though extinct species. How long before they would really be extinct? Is it worth disturbing their habitat more than we have already? These sharks have never encountered humans until now, shouldn’t they be given the chance to flourish and live on their own without us constantly watching them, tagging them, and testing them just so we can know more. I’m really not sure we should bring these pictures and film to the public eye. I discussed it with Nancy and Seth, and they both feel the same about not wanting to disrupt the sharks any more than we have already, but they also know it would be great to show what we have documented. They said it is up to me, I discovered these amazing creatures, I should be the one to decide what we do with our documentations.
* * * *

Tuesday June 5, 2007
This morning we woke up to the sound of a helicopter flying over head. We rushed out of our tents to see if what we were hearing was really true. Sure enough there in the sky was a helicopter circling our camp site. We frantically waved our arms, jumped up and down, screamed as loud as we could, whatever we could do to get their attention. The chopper landed soon after seeing us, and we packed all our gear into the chopper and headed for a boat that was waiting for us. That’s where I’m writing this now. It seems National Geographic had decided to send some people to check on us since they had not heard from us in a week or so. Everyone was so astonished to hear our story of the boat wreck, and surviving in the arctic with next to nothing.
As for the documentation of the megalodon sharks, I decided to destroy all the pictures and video footage. I threw it all into the ocean, right where I thought it belonged. We of course we’re left with the problem of explaining why the boat was destroyed and what happened to Marshall. We told them it was a great white shark that had strayed too far north. It has been known to happen now and then, great whites have turned up in stranger spots. Seth, Nancy and I all kept the information about the real sharks we had seen between the three of us. However, I kept the first photograph I took of the megalodon, the shadow in the water right before the boat attack. I am going to frame that and hang it in my house, and when guests ask what it is, I’ll laugh and jokingly say “Oh some extinct species most likely.”