Abu Dhabi's marine conservation: Paul Hamilton on UAE ocean life rescue and his new docu-film

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00:00On Monday, we have Beyond the Blue releasing on National Geographic, and we want to put

00:10the word out there. Perhaps we'll start with the basics. Why should we watch this documentary?

00:16The core essence of the film are all big environmental messages. It's quite clever in that the topics

00:27which are sometimes quite depressing are actually made entertaining through the fact that we're

00:34doing these rescues and there's all this exciting drama going on and there's emotion and all

00:40of this, which kind of is a very nice way for us to tackle the subject, because there's

00:47plenty of films out there that just show factories blowing smoke. But we certainly want to kind

00:53of put some heart to the conservation topics, and I think the film achieved that.

00:59What kind of conservation projects did you do? Because there's so many, right? You've

01:03done extensive work from turtles, rehabilitating marine species, but you need to tell me, like,

01:09did you guys have trouble, like, filtering out what would make a great story? Like, did

01:14you decide on what chapter should be touched upon?

01:20The interesting part about the story, which is not really overly mentioned in the film,

01:26but is something that you can certainly dive into, is when we started collecting the footage.

01:33This goes all the way back to COVID. So you imagine in the film during the whale shark

01:39rescues, I was living in Dubai. We had emergencies in Abu Dhabi and I was doing these urgent

01:47PCR tests and I was at the border trying to rush security to get me through the border

01:53so that I could get into Abu Dhabi and execute the rescues. So it was a very strange time

02:00in the world. Our most common activity is to rescue, rehabilitate and release sea turtles.

02:07In the film, it's not really mentioned, but we're actually up at 1,200 sea turtles now.

02:15These are all endangered species. When you have a critically endangered species, every

02:19single individual that makes it back into the wild is kind of like securing the future

02:27of the species, because that's a breeding individual back in the game. Really trying

02:32to work on the sea turtle issue. We have a very natural issue for turtles in this area,

02:41it's extremely hot and then relatively cold. A lot of the turtles are tourists,

02:49so they're not actually born in the Arabian Gulf. They come in here, there's a huge amount

02:54of food in the Arabian Gulf. The gulf is actually kind of thriving with nutrients.

03:00The turtles love it in here. Then what happens is winter comes along and both the turtles and

03:07the people, every year we somehow forget how cold it actually gets and they get cold stunned.

03:14A storm comes through, washes them up on the beach. I would say almost, I'd say 50% of our

03:22turtles are found by general public. The other half are found by companies, companies that work

03:29on different parts of the UAE coast. Now what we were not anticipating is some of the other

03:37stuff we kind of got involved with. There are whale shark rescues in there. We're talking

03:45huge sharks, like six meter plus animals. These situations we never saw coming.

03:54The film makes it seem dramatized, I think in reality the drama was even higher.

04:01It was quite an intense time. I don't know how much money I invested in trying to find

04:08a whale shark to observe in the ocean. I reached out to people who have experience with whale

04:14sharks and they were like, wow, okay, I can't say anything about that situation because it's

04:20nothing like anything we've ever touched. It kind of left us in a place where we had to invent

04:26and that's what we did. We started inventing ways in which to move these animals without harming

04:32them. This is amazing what you just told me. I mean, like you said, in your career you have worked

04:37in New Zealand and every other part of the world you can think of, but finally it came to the UAE

04:42and perhaps Abu Dhabi for you to have this career. It's a career defining moment for you and a

04:47project for you, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm wearing scars. This is a big scar on my arm.

04:53This is from the whale shark. This is a huge part of my life's memories now is that whole saga.

05:02It's pretty awesome that that was all captured by drones and by cameras and all of this stuff

05:09was filmed. Then it's even more incredible to see it arrive in a Nat Geo production.

05:15As far as animals and wildlife go, the Disney Nat Geo productions are the absolute peak of it.

05:22They do the best stuff in the world. On the one hand, you're kind of crippled and pressured by

05:30this task, but on the other hand, we were very privileged to have the technology around us to

05:35capture the whole thing and for this to eventually arrive in a film. Education is also part of this

05:40documentary, right? How do you think it's going to inspire people towards perhaps protecting the

05:46environment more, being more responsible towards marine life? How do you think this documentary

05:51will help? The film kind of follows various situations for the animals. Watching, let's say,

05:58a particular turtle who has a particular issue and then it's discovered that there's plastic in

06:03its stomach and the plastic is extracted. The turtle does well. He ends up in the Louvre sanctuary

06:11and he's eventually released with a satellite tape. The journey of this character animal,

06:18it educates inadvertently by people understanding the crisis that got it there

06:27was actually man-made. EAD is essentially the authority, so whether we respond or not is

06:34a decision made by them. They say to us, hey, there's a turtle needing rescue, can you guys

06:41respond? We go, there's a dugong, there's a whale shark, there's a sea snake. They manage the hotline

06:47so when things are seen on the coast or happen on the coast, the first call kind of goes through

06:53them and then we are the team that responds and then on the bigger, higher profile rescues, they

07:00join us on the rescue. I like it, you're like the Baywatch. Baywatch with our shirts on, yeah.

07:11That's one way to, what is the most surprising and unique rescue that you carried out and that

07:16has found its way into the movie? There's a particular rescue in the movie which is quite

07:22heart-wrenching and that's the dugong. There's a baby dugong and again this was at a very strange

07:29period of time for us. We were still not open as a national aquarium, but we were actively

07:35executing these rescues. So you're going to see the dugong story in the film and

07:42it's pretty heartbreaking because we don't succeed. Thank you so much for speaking to us

07:47and letting us into your world. Thank you so much and thank you for doing this for us.

07:52No problem, thank you.

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