OCEAN BED AS A STAGE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 119, 23 May 1925, Page 16

OCEAN BED AS A STAGE

CTNEMATOGIUPHING THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA.

Mr. Ernest Williamson has turned an invention of his father's for marine engineering into a device for cinematographing the ocean bed. It is merely a steel tube ending in a water-tight steel chamber. As the tube is made up of sections, it can be of any reasonable length Inside of each section is a circle of hinges, so that the entire tube of the photographing apparatus, instead ol being rigid, is flexible and collapsible, much as a Chinese lantern is. Most of Williamson's pictures aTe taken as a depth of from 25 feet to 40 feet; sometimes he goes 50 feet below the surface. He says he can go oven deeper than that. It is merely a question of adding more sections to the tube and making the apparatus of heavier steel.

At first (,say3 Mr. Williamson, in the "Pictorial Magazine") I thought I had to use artificial light to make pictures under water. So. I would lower a big reflector twelve feet wide, and containing banks of powerful electric lights into tho water above the scene that I wauted to photograph. I still use this sometimes. But I found that sunlight penetrates to the depths at which I usually work, and it is better than artificial fight. On a sunny day, looking through the glass windows of tho submerged chambers, we can see at least 300 feet; the camera will register objects more than 200 feet away, and will give good pictures ot scenes 100 feet distant frqm the chamber. Out in the open wo unscrew the face plates of our helmets when we have to talk; but water is a good transmitter of sound, and we can communicate without removing them while on the ocean bed. If we wanted to get a lot of fish into the picture v?e would rap with some heavy metal object on the inside of the 6teel chamber. Within a few seconds we would see myriads ot them coming from all directions. They are curious. Often wheu I am down in a diving suit fish will swim right up to Jiie and look in through the glass vi front of my helmet.

I have seen dozens of sharks, but they never attacked us, because wo watched for them, and did not givo them a chance. Ordinarily a, shark will circle round yon at a distance and for some timo before ha decides to attack. The water is so. clear.'there that, as I have said, wii could see several hundred fnel away; If we saw a shark circling around one of our actors we could send a nativa diver to divert its attention. I always had native divers on board, and they are .-).<:Qusl.omed to sharks. 6n ß thing which we proved by our motion pictures o( sharks is that they do not have to turn over in order to bits. As their eyes arc set far apart, one on each side of the great fiat head, a shark often turns on its side- in order to look at some object. But I have made many pictures of them biting off huge chunks of the bait we lowered to attract them, and they did it without turning over.