Rob & Laura leading the shark oath

We had an incredible week at the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. The Shark Riddle took home the award for Best Children’s Program – awesomeface! And equally as awesomeface was the crowd’s reaction to our Shark Days presentation.  We were told that demand was so high to see it, that the event sold out in just three days after it was announced. The historic Wilma Theater was packed with a thousand kids and teachers bused in from local schools who watched our film and presentation about the diversity and importance of sharks. One kindergarten teacher told us that his students had been preparing for the day by singing The Great White Shark Song in class. That same teacher asked permission to cover the song with his band of teacher musicians. How could we possibly say no?!

Laura & Rob sing The Great White Shark Song

A woman in the crowd said that she couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled for that long. I love comments like that!  Also, a parent at the event shared that she had recently seen our other Riddle Solvers film, The Riddle in a Bottle, with her kid’s class and had expected to hate it. She hates nearly all children’s programming on television – which is why she never lets her children watch television. But at some point she realized that something about our film was different, and by the end, it had touched someplace deep inside her heart that she had never expected. (I think it was the left ventrical – that’s the part of the heart reserved for singing animals and crying pirates.) In fact, the woman was so moved that now she volunteers for the festival and organizes the children’s screenings. How cool is that?!

The inflatable basking shark meets Missoula

To thank the crowd, we gave out free temporary shark tattoos as well as posters sponsored by the Save Our Seas Foundation which were a huge hit and showed them how to make a personalized shark diving e-card.

Laura shares the shark diving e-card

And finally, if you’ve ever been interested in wildlife filmmaking and wanted to know how to step into that world, then try attending IWFF in Missoula sometime. It’s the longest running wildlife film festival in the world and provides an incredible opportunity to meet so many incredibly talented filmmakers and conservationists from around the globe. For instance, this year lifetime achievement awards were given to Dr. Richard Leakey and Dr. Sylvia Earle, both legends in the fields of biology and conservation, as well as Fred Kaufman of PBS Nature and Dr. Thomas Kaplan, founder of Panthera.  And talk about leaders in conservation, Greg and Barbara MacGillivray were there to promote the One World One Ocean campaign, which is working over 15 years to inspire people to protect the ocean.  It’s a massive initiative combining film, television, new media and educational outreach to help save our blue planet. Check out their stunning new 3D IMAX film To The Arctic.  Hope and optimism are contagious, so feel free to spread it…

Special thanks to Kevin Collins for the photographs.

I hadn’t thought about how much we use the word “quest” in our story. But the pirate constantly repeats his vow “I vow that I will never give up. I’ll never stop me quest! Until I find that beautiful leg I promise not to rest!” So if you are looking for a children’s book that features the “qu” pairing a lot, try A Pirate’s Quest.

Great White Shark E-Card

Here is your chance to make it look like you are diving with a shark! Visit our Shark E-Card page and choose from three sharks – the great white shark, the hammerhead shark or the basking shark. Then upload a photo of your face, and you will look like a scuba diver with a shark. We are very excited about this interactive card. It was funded with a grant from the Save Our Seas Foundation, and programmed by Ms. Libbey White. We spent a long time brainstorming what kind of shark e-card would be really fun, to accompany our movie The Shark Riddle, and we finally decided this was the answer. We were inspired by the “Your Face Here” type of cards.

So go ahead shark lovers, create all the shark e-cards you want. It is totally free. You will have ample opportunity to impress your friends, you neighbors, your new crush, your old crush . . . And if you are a scuba diver who is bummed that you can’t dive as much as you want (like my brother Robert), this can give you that taste of being under the water.

Robert Sams with his basking shark e-card image

Hammerhead Shark E-Card

The movie The Shark Riddle was just named Best Children’s Program at the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, as well as Best Educational Short at the International Family Film Festival in Hollywood, California. Celebrate by making your own shark-themed card for the kids in your life.

The Smithsonian Channel recently called us with an unusual request – to create a music video about the largest snake that ever slithered the earth: the Titanoboa!  You can imagine our delight!  A monster snake longer than a school bus, and as heavy as a car!  A snake that would dwarf today’s largest anacondas and boas.  A snake that, if it were to slither by you, would be as high as your waist.  A snake that could “Swallow me whole!”  Don’t worry, for all you snake-o-phobes out there. This one is extinct.  Its 50 million-year-old fossils were found by scientists in a Columbian coal mine.

How would you write a song about a monster snake?  What would be your hook, your angle?  If your brain immediately jumped to a crocodile man singing a tribute in the style of a Neil Diamond rock anthem, then we must share the same brain.

Here are a few fun facts about the Titanoboa Music Video:

1) Yes, I play the crocodile and that is my real voice. Laura plays the cow, and Jason Wells plays the turtle.

2) The crocodile’s green suit was donated by Béla Balogh, the incredible violinist for the Portland-based band, 3 Leg Torso.

3) Those are my real hands. I was born with green crocodile hands, which made me perfect for this role.

4) The Titanoboa Music Video is part of the promotional campaign for the Smithsonian Channel’s new two-hour special, Titanoboa: Monster Snake.  It’s a catchy song, so please enjoy and share it with your friends!  Who knows?  Maybe someday it will become a staple of karaoke bars everywhere.  You can watch it here!

Shark Riddle tattoo on a fan

The Monterey Bay Aquarium was swarming with 11,000 ocean enthusiasts who came out for the annual Shark Days Celebration.  We were part of the weekend’s featured presentations, thanks to a grant from the Save Our Seas Foundation. We must have handed out around 2,000 of our shark hand-tattoos. We had a great turnout for the weekend, so thanks to everyone who came to see us share scenes and stories from our film The Shark Riddle.  It’s always a treat hearing a packed auditorium sing like sea-lions in a live rendition of The Great White Shark Song.  We taught the crowd to think like Shark Dentists.  And we also enjoyed playing our impromtu game show Big Or Small to remind people that sharks come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the size of your hand to the size of a school bus. There is no one kind of shark – they are all unique!

A young shark enthusiast playing Big or Small

The aquarium was nice enough to give us a behind-the-scenes tour so we could see feedings of their gigantic open-ocean exhibit. Imagine an enormous swirling soup chocked full of glittering sardines, psychedelic mahi mahi, torpedo-like tuna, giant sea turtles, hammerhead sharks and more, all speeding around to fill their stomachs with tasty morsels raining from above.

Mahi mahi flashing bright blue and green while feeding

If you’ve never been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, put it on your bucket list. It truly is one of the world’s great aquariums.  There aren’t many other places you can find so many species of sharks in one place, including the occasional great white if you time it right.

Kids make shark hats at Shark Day!

We had a great day of celebrating sharks at the Hatfield Marine Science Center on the Oregon coast.  We managed several hundred people for the event, despite a severe winter storm that had closed several nearby highways. We were lucky to make it there ourselves!  Our film,The Shark Riddle, screened twice, and we had a table set up where visitors could make their own shark hats and bookmarks.  We also had our life-sized, 23’ long, basking shark on display for those who wanted to get a sense of how tiny we humans are compared with the giants among fish.

One of the highlights of the day was the necropsy of a juvenile salmon shark that had recently washed up on a nearby beach.  The necropsy was simultaneously shown on several video monitors throughout the museum and streamed online to viewers at home who couldn’t make it out.

Those of us there in person were encouraged to get our hands dirty and touch and poke and prod to our heart’s content.  Speaking of which, this shark was found to be without a heart!  Can you guess why? A strange hole along the gills gave us a clue.  We think that after it washed up on the beach, a hungry shorebird pecked its way inside to pull out a tasty treat!  One thing I learned was that the vertebrae of sharks contain growth rings that can actually help a scientist determine its age. This shark was less than a year old.

Laura Sams participates in a salmon shark necropsy.

The HMSC is operated by Oregon State University and managed by Oregon Sea Grant. Its visitor center features exhibits on marine species, marine research, and the coastal environment with live marine animals, interactive puzzles and games that demonstrate marine science concepts and other aspects of our amazing ocean planet.

Kids make shark crafts at Shark Day

Jen, Bryce and reluctant Judy meet the basking shark.

In a rare event last week, a giant basking shark was spotted several miles inland on the Big Island of Hawaii. Upon closer inspection, onlookers found this 23’ specimen to be made of fabric and air and accompanying screenings of our newest film, The Shark Riddle.

We’d like to thank the Waimea Ocean Film Festival and The Save Our Seas Foundation for making it possible for us to share our shark presentation with the people of Hawaii. Through a combination of film, breakfast talks, Q&As, receptions, art exhibits and activities, the festival is designed to inspire, educate and engage participants in a celebration of the ocean and island culture, and an increased awareness of the same. Throughout the week, we shared The Shark Riddle at three public screenings, as well as a school presentation for students at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy. The students were so great to meet – in fact, two kindergarten students (with help from their Principal) presented us with beautiful leis when we arrived. After our program, we loved talking with the students, and we especially loved that there was a ukelele music class practicing while we were packing up our gear. Their Principal later said “We found both Laura and Rob to be highly engaging, fun, animated and well spoken presenters for our kindergarteners through fifth graders. It is no small feat to keep such a range of learners at rapt attention for almost an hour and they did exactly that. The smiles on the children’s faces as they left with their packet of fun educational activities AND their fabulous temporary tattoos were priceless.”

Rob & Laura with HPA students, all holding "shark fins" on their heads

We participated in the festival as part of our “Shark Days” grant from the Save Our Seas Foundation. The grant funded this custom inflatable shark, which we take with us as a way for people feel what it’s like to stand next to a true giant of the ocean, and to open minds to the true diversity of sharks.  The basking shark is the second largest fish in the ocean, growing to 33 feet, and is completely harmless to humans as it only eats plankton.

People investigate the basking shark after our interactive presentation

Sisbro at the Kahilu Theater

And as an added bonus, the Waimea Ocean Film Festival awarded us with the Overall Best Creative Work!

Laura and Rob at the Hatfield Marine Science Center

It’s huge! Not full grown, but at 23 feet, it’s still a huge shark! It’s a basking shark, the world’s second largest species of fish, and right now this one lives in my garage. It’s not a real basking shark of course. It’s an inflatable, made of fabric and air. But it looks about as realistic as an inflatable shark can look I think. We spent a couple of months designing this shark with the help of the custom-inflatables company Landmark Creations out of Minnesota. This basking shark will now spend its life as an ambassador for sharks everywhere as it allows people to feel what it’s like to stand next to a true giant among sharks. We designed this inflatable shark as part of a grant from the Save Our Seas Foundation that has opened the door for us to visit aquariums, museums, schools and libraries to promote “Shark Days,” a series of family friendly shark events based around our film The Shark Riddle. We created The Shark Riddle (through SOSF support) with the goal of spreading two simple messages – 1) Sharks are important for a healthy ocean, and 2) Sharks are very diverse.

And what better way to share the diversity of sharks than to bring along a life-sized basking shark – a giant among sharks with a huge gaping mouth designed for feeding on the tiniest creatures drifting in the ocean’s current.

Rob at the Seattle Aquarium