![]() ![]() It took him two years of dedicated tracking to figure out how it killed sea urchins, something, he says “even scientists didn’t know.” “This is a helmet shell snail,” he says, picking up a creamy orange spiral. Each item has a story, and he starts tripping over his words in an attempt to tell them all. As Foster points out a tiny hole in an abalone shell that shows where an octopus has drilled down to get at the creature inside, his quiet reserve disappears. Some octopuses were urchin specialists, others hunted giant turbo snails. An old library card catalogue has been repurposed as a specimen case, each drawer containing shells found in the abandoned den of a single octopus. His snack finished, Foster gets up to give a tour of his collections. “You have to name a place in order for people to care about and protect it,” he says. ![]() “The idea was to get this great African Sea Forest, the home of the octopus teacher, recognized as a global icon, like the Serengeti or the Great Barrier Reef.” He is hoping that the success of My Octopus Teacher, which was backed by his NGO, will effectively brand the sea forest in the popular consciousness. In order to safeguard the region, Foster cofounded The SeaChange Project in 2012. ![]() One of only eight kelp forests in the world, it is vital for ocean biodiversity but little known outside of conservation circles. His goal was to better understand the complex ecosystem at his front door, and in doing so, draw attention to what he calls the Great African Sea Forest, a 1200-kilometer-long stand of golden sea bamboo, or kelp, along Africa’s southwestern coast. While Foster documented every dive with a video camera, he did not set out with a plan to make a film. By studying her actions and observing her learn, play and recover from injury, he applied lessons to his own life - even knitting together a fractured relationship with his son. It was only several years in that the strange behavior of a small speckled octopus sparked his curiosity, and kept his attention for the duration of her short life. “If I could spend every day in a wild environment, how well could I get to know it? Could I learn to read tracks like the hunters in the Kalahari? Could I predict animals’ behavior?” “I desperately wanted to have that feeling,” he says. He recalled the San hunters’ deep immersion in nature and realized that was what was missing in his life. He felt like he had lost his connection to the world around him, he says, and even to his own family. She opened my mind to just how complex and precious wild creatures are.”Ĭelebrated for his groundbreaking 2000 film, The Great Dance, about the San bush-hunters of the Kalahari desert, Foster found himself in 2011 burnt out and physically wrecked by the stress of trying to survive as a nature documentary filmmaker. “She taught me humility,” he says, while grazing on a post-dive snack of wholegrain toast with butter. He also documents his own efforts to understand her world and how that quest led to emotional and intellectual growth. ![]()
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