It was an interesting feeling, not completely unknown, but I hadn’t felt it in awhile. I was scared. I don’t get afraid much anymore when I’m producing a show…I get nervous, I get nauseous, and I’m prone to panic. That’s not fear. But I found myself afraid when I was down in New Zealand last week…I shouldn’t have been, but I was. We were in the Waitomo Caves, which if you look them up are these tremendous underground caves in the northern island that snake hundreds of feet below the rolling shires. The whole crew was geared up, with Jeff, Eugene and Ross who were locals leading the way down the slippery rock into the gaping hole that opened just barely enough to squeeze in. They led we followed…into complete darkness and dampness.
Now, these are big boys that ride the “Extreme” roller coaster, they’ve seen the world, and have been in hairy situations that usually start with “we’d all been drinking hard that night….when we heard the guns”. This makes them extremely comfortable to be around no matter the situation, and they get bonus points for making me laugh most of the time. Actually, I’ve spent a lot of night this year just laughing, which in retrospect is a good thing, but an equal amount of nights doing the opposite, so we’ve got the balance. We’ve done a lot of action/adventure stuff with this show, which looks good on paper, and sometimes we pull off. But there are times where being there is so much more intense than what we’re able to capture on camera…like I watch the footage when we get back and think man.it was so much dicer than that, or colder, or hotter, or more often smellier. Actually that’s what I wish I could bring back through the camera…the smell of a place.
Now, going into the cave, I smelt cool air, dampness, and a twinge of acid from my gut as I slipped on the second step and almost wiped out…one hand was on a light panel, the other on our underwater housing we were bringing ‘just in case’…we were going there to capture eels, in waist deep water, about a mile in. There’s just something about me and the eel…same way I feel about the possum….I don’t like em, and I always get the feeling that they’re going to run into me blindly and start gnawing. These are eels that live in darkness for up to 80 years, huge eels. As we walked in deeper and deeper we moved through a series of tight holes into open areas. Eugene pointed out an assortment of bones that had come from cows or sheep or who knows what else…they got trapped down here and couldn’t get out. A couple times we stopped and turned off all the lights to see the Waitomo glowworms, Arachnocampa luminosa, which are unique to New Zealand. Thousands of these tiny creatures radiate their luminescent light…turning the ceiling into a makeshift planetarium…Thank god for those light panels, these beautiful battery powered led panels led the way and lit the place like a chandelier, which made me feel better until we entered deeper and deeper water.
That’s when I was scared…waist deep in water…arms above my head with gear. Jeff and Eugene had found the net…and there were 3 monster eels in the trap.. We were making a big deal shooting and documenting, when Jeff and Eugene started wrestling with the first big boy, about 3 feet long and the girth of a grapefruit…it was slipping and sliming around, Eugene was telling Jeff how these things bite and then it was gone, splashing about a foot in front of me…I froze just thinking that this big eel was going to bite into the closest thing to him…which was me. No nothing happened, nor did I feel the second eel that escaped the same way…it was good television…Jeff and Eugene had managed to lose 2 of the 3 eels in the net in about 45 seconds…and they weren’t trying to do it…it was happening against their will.
That’s when the more common producer’s feeling hit me…the dread. Wait a second, we’ve lost 2 of these beasts, and we only have one more…we don’t get this one we are screwed…not catching is not acceptable. They both worked to get him into the gunny sack, and we had dinner…and I got out of that cave as quick as I could.
Tim McOsker