Man versus wild

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Tags: animals, biological sciences, conservation, Science, summer-2010

Dr Chadden Hunter explores ravines on the Antarctic ice cap while filming the BBC series Frozen Planet

Sharing the rugged mountains of Ethiopia with a group of inquisitive monkeys was a far cry from the science labs at The University of Queensland, but Chadden Hunter couldn’t have been happier.

That was 1997, when the 24-year-old had recently begun his journey as a PhD student.

A decade later, swimming with beluga whales and stalking snow leopards is all in a day’s work for the award-winning filmmaker, whose documentaries have been beamed into millions of households worldwide.

After being discovered by the legendary Sir David Attenborough while studying baboons in Ethiopia in 2000, Dr Hunter has worked as a scientific consultant and documentary maker for major networks including the BBC and National Geographic.

Earlier this year he took time out from his latest project, narrated by Sir David, to be the keynote speaker at the UQ Science Centenary Alumni Reunion in July.

On returning to his alma mater, Dr Hunter shared some of his incredible experiences and discussed the critical role the media plays in promoting conservation and biodiversity.

He told of his amazement upon first exploring the Simien Mountains in Ethiopia and meeting their rowdy inhabitants – the screeching Gelada baboons.

“When I first encountered the Gelada, I thought I was wandering into a riot of werewolves,” he recalls.

“Their screeches and fangs are intimidating – but as I got closer and closer to the group, I began to realise that underneath all the bravado and showing off, the males are a bunch of show ponies.”

Dr Hunter was eventually accepted into the primate family to the point he could lounge in the middle of clusters of them.

However, his love for these loud and colourful monkeys was not shared by the locals, who viewed them as vermin for devouring precious barley crops.

Dr Hunter quickly became the primates’ PR man as the government and farmers moved to cull the animal.

“The main thing I did to help the Geladas was to get enough public awareness out there about them being unique and something worth protecting,” he says.

It was this challenge that introduced him to the power of the mass media to change public opinion, and steered him towards the path of making wildlife documentaries.

This new career course was further reinforced by Sir David’s visit.

“My mother claims as a child I got so excited when an Attenborough show came on that I’d crawl up the back of the sofa, hardly breathing, eyes glued to the TV with my back pressed to the lounge room wall,” Mr Hunter says.

“At the age of 28, I found myself on a mountain top in Ethiopia. Sir David Attenborough was standing beside me listening intently as I advised him on what to say and not say on camera about the Geladas.

“It felt like only days earlier, I was a young undergraduate sifting through the biology courses on offer at UQ.”

Recognised for his research and documentary achievements, Dr Hunter was chosen to present the prestigious UQ/Brisbane Institute Annual Steve Irwin Memorial Lecture on July 6. In 2008, Mr Irwin was also honoured with a posthumous Adjunct Professorship to mark his commitment to conservation and the research links he established between UQ and Australia Zoo.

Titled “From Clipboard to Camera: the Role of Media in Conserving Nature’s Biodiversity”, Dr Hunter’s lecture was a sell out within days.

To the delight of the audience, he unveiled raw footage from his latest project Frozen Planet. The seven-part series, to be released in 2011 and narrated by Sir David, explores life in the polar regions and the effects of climate change on glaciers, ice shelves and sea ice.

Audiences were treated to vivid footage of a mother polar bear with cubs in an icy den, arctic wolves bringing down bison and emperor penguins huddling together for warmth.

Dr Hunter also detailed the incredible lengths the documentary team went to in order to capture the life cycle of a polar bear in captivity.

“The polar bear mother in winter is an amazing story – to give birth she climbs on a mountainside slope where she knows snow will build up on her in autumn,” he says.

“She curls up and goes to sleep while this snow cave builds around her.

“In this ice cave she gives birth to very small young and suckles them through the winter while storms rage outside.”

After talking to experts about how best to film the sequence, the BBC decided it was safest to capture the footage at a Dutch zoo, where a polar bear den was built from scratch.

“Inside this fake den we put cameras into the walls and ceilings for five different angles and they’re all infrared because it has to be dark,” Dr Hunter explains.

“We couldn’t move the cameras so we had to aim them at a spot where we thought the mother polar bear would roll over – we didn’t know what we would get…like CCTV we would eventually get glimpses of one of the cubs suckling.

”Other spectacular footage from Frozen Planet includes a pack of killer whales creating waves to knock seals off an ice ledge.

Dr Hunter said some of the underwater shots required diving at temperatures of minus two degrees in a specialised suit which he likened to an “enormous full-body doona”.

“You’ve got a mask around your head, and your lips are exposed. For the first 20 minutes it’s absolutely excruciating, and they say the second 20 minutes are dangerous.

“You start to feel your lips stinging and there’s so much pain they go numb – at the end of a 40-minute dive the skin from the lips starts to die and bits of flesh are coming off…and you can just never keep your extremities like your fingers warm enough.”

It’s no wonder Dr Hunter is seeking a warmer experience for his next project.

“I would like my next job to be South America where it’s green and warm. In the polar regions you have to travel a long way to find animals and it’s very sterile with only snow and no smells,” he says.

Dr Hunter said he hoped to inspire UQ science students to keep an open mind when pursuing a career.

“My advice is to look much broader than one might think when hitting the job market and look for overseas opportunities,” he says.

Born in Mt Isa, Dr Hunter travelled from an early age, attending school in the USA and Iran before returning to Australia and falling in love with the rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef.

“During my childhood it was always about a love for nature. It is what obsessed me, what my passion was about,” he says.

“The first time I went snorkelling on the reef as a kid, it just blew my mind – the colour and the fact that it is another planet or world down there.”

Originally wanting to become a biology teacher, it seems both his childhood dreams have come true, as he travels the globe educating others about the wonders of the natural world.

“What I love about the job is there’s something new to experience and it stimulates your hunger for new adventures and subjects.”

By Belinda Berry

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