THE POWER OF PLACE


INDONESIA


CAPTURING THE CORAL REEFS


DOUG ALLAN


“ I ’m granted a chance encounter with a whale shark. The gi ll rakers that sieve out her tiny plankton food are visible inside her open mouth as she swims past me.”


Underwater, there’s a breath- taking profusion of life: dazzling hard corals in spiky blues and pale yellows; soft anemones like floppy grey mushrooms; rainbow riots of fish. The water, as warm as a bath at the surface, meets the deeper, cooler layers. This fuzzy thermocline interface plays hell with the focus through the camera lens as I rise and sink through it; it’s like lime juice being poured into a margarita. Above me, the school of


fish is so dense it darkens the sun. It moves like a giant single organism, swirling like a murmuration of starlings. As if by magic, holes appear in the fish mass as my bubbles rise through it. Cruising on the periphery are the mobula rays, predators capable of bursts of speed so fast there’s no way I can follow them close up. I film them wide and hope the editor can make something of it.


Doug Allan is an award-winning wildlife and documentary cameraman whose credits include BBC One’s The Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, and National Geographic documentaries. dougallan.com


FROM TOP: The spectacular rock formations of Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago; clownfish seen on an anemone during one of Doug’s dives in Raj Ampat


Jul/Aug 2020 79


IMAGES: GETTY; DOUG ALLEN


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