When I wrote my initial manifestation list while I was looking for a volunteer opportunity, one of the components was an opportunity to better my underwater photography and videography skills and find a mentor in this area. So, when I found out about Megan (an underwater photographer) and TRACC, it felt truly kismet that everything worked out and brought us both here.
I didn’t have too many expectations for our friendship since I generally found people who identify as Instagram influencers not needing new friends. So, when I first met her I was surprised at our instant connection and ability to finish each other’s sentences. From day one, we were like two peas in a pod and discovered that we had many odd similarities including nearly identical middle and last names. Aside from our height difference, we had the same hair color and texture, the same peg lateral teeth, and even had matching bumps on the tops of our feet. Plus, we both had an unnatural obsession with clownfish and Spongebob Squarepants.
I felt bad for stereotyping her before we met and felt the awkwardness when we arrived at TRACC for the first time and people referred to her as the “Instagram girl”. She seemed to be held to a different standard by everyone else making her more exposed to judgement and criticism.
We would spend hours chatting after dinner, looking up at the stars from the roof of the jetty. I loved listening to her career path and found her world fascinating. She only partners with brands and products that she believes in and gets sent all kinds of cool stuff to take pictures with for brands to use in their campaigns. She also gets paid to travel by getting to work with tourism boards or other tour companies, hinting that she was likely going to the Caribbean after her time in Malaysia. She could get paid a few thousand dollars just to endorse something on her Instagram.
Although all of this sounded like a dream, I could sense the underlying stress. Aside from waiting for delinquent invoices to get paid and working on deliverables for recent clients, she was also tasked with producing content for TRACC’s social media. Unfortunately, her level of social celebrity also exposed her to certain risks and made her a target for theft or worse. Aside from traveling with an expensive camera setup, she had just learned one of her influencer friends was been assaulted in Indonesia after posting in real-time, exposing her location. For her safety, she wouldn’t be able to post anything about TRACC while we were volunteering there.
Her inability to post inspired me to fill her spot. While on my Path of Least Resistance trip, I posted 4-10 stories a day on Instagram of what had happened throughout the day. These stories seemed to be really popular with my friends and family since there were better able to keep tabs on my daily activities. I decided to continue this during my time at TRACC and found that I loved sharing videos of all the conservation work. Robin seemed to appreciate the content and reposted everything I shared which made me realize that I could do something like this for other conservation groups as well and maybe help to offset the expense of volunteering.
Megan’s other challenge was that she needed to collect the content of her volunteering at TRACC but it’s almost impossible to do this alone. So, fortunate for me, she let me use her camera regularly to take pictures and videos of her. Then, let me download and edit whatever footage I wanted. Using a professional camera underwater was super eye-opening for me, having only used a GoPro underwater. Under the right conditions, I realized the GoPro is a decent little camera for what it’s worth. Poor lighting and visibility affected both cameras in the same way and I realized the key to getting great underwater photos is mostly dependent on the conditions instead of the gear.
This posed another problem for Megan. When we first arrived at TRACC, Megan wanted to focus her time on learning to do the conservation work and then document it in the later weeks. We didn’t realize how fantastic the conditions were when we arrived. The water had great visibility and no current for our first couple of weeks which degraded once we started filming Megan doing the tasks.
Footage of Megan deeper than 50 feet was too dark because the water clarity was poor. On some dives, our bad luck filming was comical and we would have ripping current while trying to plant coral. On days when we tried to film Megan doing a turtle survey, no turtles were to be found. On other dives where we would film her collecting Crown of Thorns, we found none but the other dive group found 30.
Aside from our bad luck filming anything below water, we also didn’t have any luck filming our nightly turtle walks. Although we were only scheduled to do turtle walks about once a week, I had been on almost every walk without seeing a single nesting turtle or turtle egg. It seemed that whenever I decided to call it an early night, sure enough, there would be a nest. As our time at TRACC drew to a close and the opportunity to collect any usable footage was dwindling, I could sense Megan felt defeated and stressed, not knowing what she would be able to produce for PADI or TRACC’s media feeds.
On our last full day on the island, we finally got a nice little surprise. Megan and I walked over to the turtle hatchery to take some pictures and videos of the relocated nests. One of the nests appeared to be concave with some slight movement below. Danial, the person in charge of monitoring the turtles, brushed off the top layer of sand and two baby turtles popped out! One by one, the baby turtles emerged from the sand the enthusiastically made their way across the sandbox. Megan and I were careful not to touch the turtles and let Danial relocate them into the bucket for release. It felt really special to be there in that moment witnessing these babies come to life.
Aside from the deep friendship I developed with Megan, I learned so much from her during our time together at TRACC. Getting to see her in action while taking pictures and videos underwater made me realize that I have come a long way in my underwater video skills as well and that I wasn’t too far off from potentially using them to generate future opportunities. She also showed me that her seemingly incredible life also comes with its challenges and stress like any career.
Our time together wasn’t over just yet because soon we were headed to Kuala Lumpur to represent TRACC at the Malaysian International Dive Expo!
