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Author's Background
WADE DOAK
WADE DOAK (1940 - )
has published numerous books of photographs and text on his great
passion, the underwater world. Wade Doak was a language teacher with
a passion for diving when in1969 he discovered a stash of coins when
diving on a shipwreck. Treasure salvage allowed him to devote his
life to studying and photographing "the blue planet", and he has
published 18 books about the
Doak's titles include:
The Elingamite and its Treasure (1969);
Beneath New Zealand Seas (1971);
Diving for Treasure (1971);
Fishes of New Zealand Region (1972);
Sharks and Other Ancestors (1975);
Islands of Survival (1976);
Dolphin Dolphin (1981); The
Burning of the Boyd (1984);
Encounters with Whales and Dolphins (1988);
Wade Doak's World of NZ Fishes (1991); Swimming with Dolphins in NZ (1993);
Friends in the Sea-Solo Dolphins in NZ and
Australia (1995);
and the TV series book:
Deep Blue- a South Pacific Odyssey (1997).
His book, I am a Fish (1999), introduces young readers to the various lifestyles of reef fish.
By turn diving pioneer, underwater hunter, undersea film maker, treasure diver, researcher into reef fish and shark behaviour, oceanographer and anthropologist, Wade Doak has devoted his life to the ocean. Convinced that salt water is good for the newborn, Lorna Doak was bathing her baby in the sea one day in April l940, at New Brighton beach, New Zealand. Suddenly a rogue wave tore the child from her hands. As the receding waters carried him away, she must have thought her little boy was lost forever in the waters of the Pacific. As luck would have it, another wave brought him back, safe and sound. Has this anything to do with her naming him Wade ? It is the name of a giant in Norse legend who walked across the fiords to carry off young virgins and devour them. But in English, "to wade " means to "walk in the water ." From the start Wade Doak seemed destined towards the ocean. The stories of his obsession with the ocean are dizzying. He grew up at some distance from the sea but haunted the local swimming pools. He soon found he preferred to swim in the calm depths of a pool rather than on the surface amongst a maelstrom of kids. With some friends he practised gathering coins on the bottom and increasing his breath hold capacity. Then, at twelve he discovered the magic portal to the underwater realm: a diving mask. For Wade and his cobbers, such a discovery extended their dives to incredible durations: one, on the edge of blackout, stayed below for almost five minutes. Inspired by Greek legends and the novels of Jules Verne and Victor Hugo, at l5 Wade decided to build a diving helmet from an old icecream can. On a Lyttelton Harbour wharf his friends pumped air down to him with a car tyre pump. He explored the murky depths of the harbour 6 metres down, on a mission worthy of Captain Nemo. Before long, on one of those harbour dives, he stumbled on an old relic in the mud -some sort of metal vase covered in weed. Surfacing he left it perched on a rock at low tide. Next day he was astounded to read in the paper that a line fisherman had snagged an archaeological treasure of great value -a chalice, no doubt lost by a colonist in the previous century ...Perhaps it was to pay back fate that Wade became, some years later a treasure hunter. Devoted and resourceful, his inventiveness brings to mind a French diving pioneer: commander Yves Le Prieur, who truly was the inventor of the self -contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba) in l925, testing it at the Trocadero aquarium in l934. At l6 years of age Wade Doak discovered undersea freedom using scuba tanks. From that time a complete new universe opened up before him. And from then on nothing could deter him from this all-embracing summons, distracting him more and more from his school studies in the humanities. In his autobiography Ocean Planet we find him in a diving suit on the bank of the Avon River, Christchurch, reading Shakespeare while waiting for a crane to install the next sections of sewer pipe which he had to bolt together to earn money. Always ready to dive, Wade even got the job of laying concrete underwater for reservoirs at the new Canterbury University at Ilam. At this time, on the other side of the world, another group of diving pioneers was discovering undersea marvels. Cousteau, Dumas, Diole, Tailliez, the "sea-musketaires " and their followers, were exploring the blue depths of the Mediterranean, taking photos and making films to immortalise their exploits. On this planet somebody is always awake. In l958, when the French divers were going to bed, on the other side of the world, Wade Doak and his friends Kelly Tarlton, Keith Gordon and Jaan Voot were setting out, just like them, to hunt fish, to take photos and make films beneath the sea. But this thirst for the ocean was not all...In June l959 with Keith he launched a little magazine, Dive , devoted to the development of diving. Seven years later it became an internationally recognised bimonthly. In l960 Wade met a young woman who was keen to improve her diving ability. I t was Jan. They set off for New Caledonia on an undersea honeymoon. Even in her eighth month of pregnancy, Jan continued to dive. Not surprisingly their son Brady was capable of accompanying his parents to 30 metres at the age of eleven. Nowadays he makes underwater filming expeditions to many parts of the Pacific and the Antarctic. Their daughter Karla started scuba diving with her mother at nine. Pursuing their passion Wade and Jan decided to live near one of the finest places for diving in New Zealand: the Poor Knights islands in the far north. But it isn’t always easy to earn a living when addicted to diving. Then, one day in l966, during an expedition for his magazine Dive, Wade and a team of divers found a shipwreck. And not just any wreck. It was the Elingamite, famous in New Zealand as a tragic turn of the century shipping loss with a fortune in gold and silver aboard. And so, for Wade, Kelly Tarlton, Jaan Voot and other companions, a new vocation: they became treasure salvors. Their expeditions were crowned with success. After multiple attempts they managed to raise 50,000 coins. Their story went around the world. Wade wrote his first book and with Kelly Tarlton worked on his first film to relate this undersea adventure. Could the dream become reality: earning a living exploring further shipwrecks, publishing a diving magazine, selling underwater photos and writing books about the sea ? Little by little Wade discovered that the real treasure is the living ocean. Fascinated he began exploring the unique undersea cliffs, caves and reefs of the Poor Knights islands. And it was alone there, in one of the most immense marine caves in the world, that he met his first dolphins. A meeting in l97l that had the power of an initiation rite in the vast Rikoriko cave, to the early Maoris a sacred place. In their language Rikoriko means both the echoing of sound and the sparkling of light. A magical place for Wade Doak who would never be the same after this encounter. A seed had been planted in his mind. At this time he was preoccupied with the behaviour of reef fish. His dream: to be able to dive amongst them and recognise each species by name and understand their social lives. He induced diving biologists to come on undersea rambles at the Poor Knights. With their knowledge he was able to bring out three books on the undersea life of New Zealand and on the social lives of fishes. A short time later Australian biologist, Barry Russell, invited him to join an expedition in the South Pacific financed by the National Geographic Society. Wild with joy he went to sea aboard the little oceanographic research ship El Torito captained by none other than Dr. Walter Stark a famous American ocean scientist and inventor. A man who had, in Wade ’s eyes, as much prestige as Cousteau himself. This was to be the first of a series of South Seas islands expeditions. Walter Stark, deeply interested in sharks, tested on himself the zebra suit (with the pattern of a venomous sea snake) to see whether it would repel sharks. Isn’t imitation the first step towards communication ?...Without doubt, inspired by these experiments, Wade was later to create his dolphin suit. With Walter Stark and El Torito, Wade studied shark behaviour and then, the lives of a melanesian people who have a shark worshipping religion. The ocean explorations of Walter Stark are related by Wade Doak in his two books Sharks and Other Ancestors and Islands of Survival. Wade Doak was resuming his own ocean studies when one April day in l975, after a superb day ’s diving at the Poor Knights with a group of biologist friends he had his second encounter with dolphins. The seed planted earlier in his mind by the Rikoriko cave encounter was copiously watered. From some time thereafter his entire life hinged on the world of dolphins. It almost seemed as if the ultimate goal of his existence had been shaped by the ocean towards a sudden moment of communication with these sea creatures, a little like an extra-terrestrial species. Contrary to traditional researchers at that time, Wade Doak did not seek to study dolphins in captivity. On the contrary, he set out to meet them in their own element and on their terms. Few people today have spent more time with these creatures in the wild. Garnering the knowledge of other divers and sharing it around, Wade and Jan Doak established Project Interlock, a global network which has brought together over many years all sorts of encounters between humans and cetaceans. After listening to the dolphins for years, he offers us his intuitions, his understandings and his deepest doubts. You will find some fine lines. Revelations will unfold... Reading Wade Doak, one is obliged to admit that the dolphin is very different from other mammals, just as, on land, the human. Human, dolphin...strange that these words have a certain resemblance. In Greek delphis is the womb from which life emerges. One thing distinguishes the dolphin from other wild animals -its benign attitude towards humans -a perfect example of philanthropy. Although we massacre them every day and hold them in prison, wild dolphins never turn on us. Why ? What are their capacities ? The enigma of the dolphin raises more and more questions and passionate imaginings. Wade Doak’s writings show that it is the truth that is so much more surprising... *Translated from Wade Doak, Ambassadeur des Dauphins, by Hugo Verlomme, J.C. Lattes -Paris,1993.
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