Costa Cetacea

Disneynature distributes the Galatee Films production Oceans The Movie  on location in Osa's Blue Water Pelagic far offshore of Caño Island Biological Reserve and Corcovado National Park in one of Costa Rica´s least known ecosystems.

You see Costa Rica´s Ocean´s The Movie stars on the big screens.  But if you want to see them on the best and biggest screen of all, real life, click here.



The Spinner Dolphins of Costa Rica star in the new Oceans The Movie.

There is perhaps no other ocean mammal that packs so many animals so close together, so much of the time, in such clear waters as the spinner dolphins here in Costa Rica. So when Galatee Films heard about these amazing dolphins the first thing they wondered about is how well these creatures would look and perform on the biggest screens in the world, filmed with the best cameras in the world. Were the spinner dolphin groups big enough to fill an IMAX screen? Could they hold their own with the most spectacular big screen ocean footage ever captured in a movie? Would they help the mission of the film and inspire the world to conserve the oceans?

The production team had already spent years scouring the globe for spinner dolphins on a grand enough scale. They went to Hawaii and Polynesia, Brazil and more, and still no spinner dolphins shots worthy of their upcoming movie Oceans. The original movie had been conceived of by Oscar winning veteran producer Jacques Perrin with spinner dolphins in mind. His team had already scored the best shots ever of myriad ocean creatures and phenomenon from around the planet. Perhaps spinner dolphins no longer existed anywhere in big enough numbers to fill the big screen. Maybe there would be no spinners in the movie.

Still Galatee Films send scouts around the globe to check again. The scouts came up with the offshore Osa. In 2007 former Cousteau underwater cameraman, and the top Blue Planet underwater cameraman Diedeir Noirot, came with Project Coordinator and Diving Security Chief Nico Ghersinich, who also was top diver for the the famed Undersea Hunter dive fleet, and decided Costa Rica´s spinner dolphins had the right stuff. After weeks of fruitless searching with over a dozen different guides and captains your correspondent was hired and found a spinner superpod in one day.  Noirot hired your correspondent as chief dolphin and pelagic ecosystem guide for the duration of the project, and some excellent shots were taken back to Paris.

2008 brought Galatee Films back in force with more extremely talented people, more cameras, more boats and more money. Your corresspondent was promoted to Costa Rica unit production manager.  A giant pole cam containing one of the huge special cameras was affixed to a large yacht. Another big camera was pushed by a diver. Another massive camera was towed in a giant torpedo. A special boat named Thetis came with an incredible gyroscopically stabilized crane that provided the steadiness to film jumping dolphins with a giant camera from a moving boat for very large screens.

A cool air-conditioned dark screening room below decks on one yacht showed real time underwater footage on a giant hi definition plasma screen. The room looked like the bridge of a spaceship and was full of glowing gadgets and screens checking all kinds of things. The contrast between swimming with the dolphins in the bright blue light by the sunlight and then watching them on the giant hi definition plasma screen in the dark theater like control room a few moments later struck me profoundly as being totally cool.

We spent close around two hundred hours with the spinners and they delivered a wish list of dream shots to some very serious movie makers. From spectacular shots of countless dolphins flying into the setting sun, to filming one spinner dolphin jump ten times-from underwater. Shots of great numbers of dolphins swimming through enormous bait balls of tiny fish with shredded scales glistening in the water like stars. The team shot dolphin sex and surfing and spinning. They filmed interactive close ups with playful smiling spinner dolphins.

Sadly the best cameras in the world also filmed dead dolphin and other dead marine life in the wake of commercial tuna boats. They filmed big ships and helicopters doing mean things to the panicking spinner dolphins. So now Costa Rica´s dolphins are poised to swim into international consciousness on big screens and DVD´s in 2010. Disneynature has now partnered with Galatee Films to bring the film to the world and it promised to be, like its topic, big. What will the world think?

Hopefully by then Costa Rica´s dolphins will be spinning in a park like they do in Hawaii and Brazil. Costa Rica´s incredible spinner dolphin footage in the Oceans movie will certainly soon splash these dolphins into world view. Costa Rica could still write itself a happy ending, instead of a tragic one, to go with the dolphins dancing into the sunset.

The country known for peace can still show the world it can make peace with nature. Maybe a new Blue Water Spinner Dolphin Pelagic Park would make everybody feel warm and fuzzy inside, as they walked out of movie theaters around world.

Copyright 2009 Shawn Larkin

by Shawn Larkin.  A version of this article appeared in The Tico Times, Central Americas top English language newspaper, in 2008.  Check out www.ticotimes.net.

This is the same dolphin tribe in the Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas Make a Wave Video, in action in Oceans of Costa Rica. See more of the same dolphin who spins, whose name is Sharkbite. Sharkbite and the spinner dolphin tribe have no protected waters in Costa Rica. Even the new plan to make marine protected areas called Forever Costa Rica does not protect these spinner dolphins. They are being killed everyday and desperately need a park, can you help? Maybe Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas could help the dolphins in their video get a park to swim free of nets and tuna dozers with a little publicity to the issue. Pelagic Parks Please for the Osa Spinner Dolphins.

Costa Rica Underwater Movie Project Aims to Conserve Oceans

This article first appeared in The Tico Times, 2007

By Shawn Larkin

Costa Cetacea Chief Guide Shawn Larkin Bio

Chief Guide Shawn Larkin´s skill has been highly recommended for more than a decade by Lonely Planet Guides, one author saying he is one of the “top people to meet in Costa Rica.” He has lead thousands of ocean expeditions on both coasts. Together with his wife, Blue Water Pelagic guide Vanessa Larkin, he has pioneered responsible Cetacean tourism and investigation for the country, added new dolphin species to Costa Rica´s list, as well as discovered new whale and dolphin feeding and social behaviors such bubble mist netting and commonplace interspecies sex. He has also worked on research projects involving many other kinds of  marine life, from lobster to coral reefs to fish to alga, with organizations such as the National University of Costa Rica, The University of Costa Rica, and the Institute for Biodiversity, The National Learning Institute, Mar Viva, Keto Foundation and many others. He has featured on The Discovery Channel´s Animal Planet and many other channels and has published hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, photos and video clips featuring Costa Rica´s oceans, as well as the classic book True Costa Rica Wild Animal Stories. Shawn has also worked in the oceans of multiple other countries, including stints on the largest sailboat in the world and tourist submarines in the Caribbean.

Shawn helped lead the activism and awareness that lead to captive dolphins being made illegal in Costa Rica in the 1990s, and the entire country being declared a Cetacean sanctuary in 2008. He has also championed movements to expand marine and aquatic protected areas for nearly two decades. He has written for The Tico Times, Central America´s largest English language newspaper since 1998. You can check out his column, The Big Blue, at www.ticotimes.net.

The top BBC Blue Planet and Earth underwater cameramen, as well as several of legendary marine conservationist and SCUBA inventor Jacques Cousteau´s former Calypso team, including the captain, an underwater cameraman, and the biologist, also highly recommend Shawn´s guiding services. He was chief spinner dolphin and Osa pelagic guide for the new Disneynature and Galatee Films movie Oceans The Movie out Earth Day 2010.  During the making of the movie he was promoted to Production Manager Costa Rica Unit.

Costa Cetacea's cheif guide Shawn Larkin was not only able to consistently find spinner dolphins far offshore for the movie and prove they were resident to a certain area. When after weeks of filming, the dolphins would not approach a diver who had to use the animal scaring bubbles of SCUBA gear to push a giant special camera, Shawn was able to invent a game with the dolphins while freediving that brought them right to the camera for the money shots, day after day. By the end of the shoot the crew and some of Shawn´s own personal ocean heros were calling him the “dolphin whisperer,” a high point in his career.