Speakers Mike deGruy: Filmmaker

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

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