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13/11/2006: "SEA SNAKES ...... from the film Australian Seafari"

While leading diving excursions aboard Coralita for Wally Muller, we recorded our highlights on 16mm underwater film – this was the age before video cameras.

Traveling to The Coral Sea gave us stops in The Swain Reefs, a good location for filming sea snakes. Venomous air breathing reptiles that seem to have been forgotten in modern documentaries.

It was at Marion Reef that Coralita deckhand (the late) Richard Weir found us a pair of mating sea snakes. The resulting film and this picture have remained unique in the decades since.

A sequence of Richard holding the reptiles was included in the 90 minute documentary Australian Seafari. (previous titled Queensland Seafari) which I filmed, edited and narrated - and distributed with 16mm projectors to theatres and clubs along the east coast of Australia from Cairns to Melbourne and inland.

The films did establish theatre records. Such promotions are not financially profitable today due to increased television advertising costs and smaller theatres having replaced the original single screen venues, and other factors.