[Villages Kahuna]

The video included in my Gotta Minute? segment was shot by both me and Mrs. Kahuna during a dive I made after hours in the Coral Reef exhibit at the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. I had taken a class in underwater videography from one of the people who worked at the Shedd and he arranged for the ten people in the class to each get about a 10 minute dive in the big tank on a Saturday evening after the aquarium was closed to the public. I had two camcorders, one that you can see me shooting with in a housing inside the tank. Mrs. Kahuna had the other one, and got her video of me thru the glass looking into the tank.

On that particular night they had treated the entire tank with some sort of anti-biotic and which had made the sharks very skittish. All the student-divers had to wait about a half hour to go in the tank while they fed the sharks about 100 lbs. of squid. I had drawn the straw to be the first diver in, so whether they had fed the sharks enough to sate their hunger remained an open question until I got in and found that they weren't hungry enough for me to be of interest.

When the VNN folks came out to do the interview, they asked if I had any video to go along with the still photos that the videoed for the segment. I gave them the unedited tape that we had shot that night. Not only did they integrate it into the Gotta Minute? segment, but the VNN cameraman took it home, rearranged the sequence of the segments of my video, put in titles and nice transitions, set it to music and ran DVD copies for me and each of my sons. I was truly appreciative.

So not only was Mrs. Kahuna pictured holding a sting ray over her head about halfway through the segment, but she also was the videographer on all the parts from outside the Coral Reef tank. (Mrs. Kahuna is a very skilled diver and keeps me out of a lot of trouble underwater when I'm concentrating on chasing some animal to get a picture.) Thanks, honey!