Mike deGruy was a graduate student in marine biology when he first picked up a 16mm film camera. Thirty-plus years on, his company, the Film Crew Inc., travels the oceans making underwater films for the BBC, PBS, National Geographic and Discovery Channel. He dived beneath both poles and visited the hydrothermal vents in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. And as you can imagine, he collected many stories along the way.
An accomplished diver and underwater cinematographer, deGruy also became a go-to host and expedition member on shows like the recent Mysteries of the Shark Coast with Céline Cousteau and Richard Fitzpatrick. (He was a regular on Shark Week -- and a shark attack survivor himelf.) But his first passion was cephalopods, and in fact deGruy and his team were the first to film two rarely seen cephalopods, the nautilus and the vampire squid, in their home ocean.
“Meeting Mike and hearing his enthusiastic stories of the deep on Mission Blue, including how octopus play and the teeming life around deep ocean vents, was a privilege and an inspiration.” — TED photographer James Duncan Davidson
On February 4, 2012, ocean filmmaker and educator Mike deGruy was killed in a helicopter crash while on assignment in Australia, along with pilot and filmmaker Andrew Wright. DeGruy (pronounced “degree”) was an Emmy-winning science documentarian and a mainstay of Shark Week; he also worked on James Cameron documentaries about the Titanic and Bismarck and […]
Continue readingWe are saddened by the news that ocean photographer, filmmaker and storyteller Mike deGruy died yesterday in a helicopter crash in Australia. Mike was truly one of the great teachers and advocates for the oceans, as you can see in his TED Talk, filmed aboard Mission Blue in 2010: [ted id=830] In this talk, as […]
Continue readingBy the end of Mission Blue Voyage, most of the attendees and speakers were sporting cool glass necklaces, a gift from Dianna Cohen, second from left, and the Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC). (From left, above, you can see filmmaker Mike deGruy, Dianna Cohen, speaker John Delaney, and the legendary Sylvia Earle, all wearing their glass […]
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