I was invited to film for The PMBC (Phuket Marine Biology Center) with my good friend Khun ED. The plan was to take off in his Cessna from a small airstrip on Phuket and then fly the short distance down to Trang. There is a well known area on the coast of Trang that has a massive area of sea grass at a depth of around 8 metres. And in this sea grass area live the beautiful manatees. Trang is famous for their Manatees and visitors to Trang will soon see them represented all over the city. On street signs, business names, statues and all kinds of other places.
They are an endangered species and are threatened mostly by habitat loss and overfishing in their environment. The PMBC has a yearly program where they fly search patterns over the main sea grass areas of Trang over several days and record their numbers. Ed’s small plane is perfect for this as it can fly very low and the doors can be removed for easily spotting and photographing.
This was my first time flying in a small plane with no doors and I have to tell you it was one of the most bizarre filming trips I have ever done. It was windy like hell, loud as hell and bumpy as hell. So not exactly ideal filming conditions hahaha. I asked why they didn’t use drones for the survey and the answer made perfect sense - the batteries don’t last long enough and the range is not good enough - unless of course they had some military standard drone that cost a few million bucks!
The actual time I spent in the plane was so much fun - the first time Ed banked the plane and descended in a tight turn to our search area I literally would have fallen out of the doorway if it wasn’t for the seatbelt. I think Ed knew that as he gave me no warning and just tipped the plane on it’s side. We spent about 1 hour flying tight U-shaped patterns in designated areas with me looking out for Manatees. We spotted many and my job was to photograph them and Ed marked them on his charts exactly where we spotted them.
I gave the PMBC all the raw footage and photographs for their own records. I have also worked with Ed filming Bryde Whales in the Gulf Of Thailand which was equally fun - I will add that story another day.