Meet Mark Davidson | Immersive Filmmaker & Environmental Scientist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mark Davidson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mark, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I was born and raised in South Africa. My father was a scientist with a passion for conservation, so I grew up surrounded by nature and learning to love our natural world from a very young age. There is a famous video clip from the 1980s of my dad being interviewed on South Africa’s most popular conservation tv show “50/50” discussing his research on the genetics of captive-bred cheetahs. The interview was conducted inside the cheetah enclosure at the Johannesburg zoo, with cheetahs visible in the background. Halfway through the discussion, as my dad was describing how how research is aimed at helping these cheetahs breed successfully in captivity, a female cheetah walks up behind him, and nuzzles up against his shoulder and then under his chin, as if to thank him. The interview was derailed in the most lovely way. It was also my Dad who later encouraged me to get scuba certified at sixteen years old, after he visited the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and desperately wanted to share his experience with my sister and I. These are just a couple of the moments that shaped who I am today and why I have such a strong drive to help protect our natural world.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve had a pretty non-standard career trajectory, and hope that it continues to be that way for the remainder. During my undergraduate degree in South Africa I was mostly interested in the natural sciences, majoring in microbiology and biochemistry. My senior thesis dissertation involved taking numerous trips down the world’s deepest gold mines (up to three miles beneath the surface), searching for some of the most ancient life forms: microorganisms living in extremely hot and oxygen-deprived waters that have been isolated from the surface of the planet for hundreds of millions of years. Quite remarkably, no matter how deep we went, we almost always found evidence of life.

I was then incredibly fortunate to be admitted to the graduate college at Princeton University to study my Ph.D. in the Department of Geosciences. My graduate research, funded mostly by NASA Astrobiology grants, continued to focus on these extreme life forms, trying to understand how these microbes could simply maintain themselves in a state of perpetual starvation, waiting for the right environmental conditions to come along and “wake them up”. I was part of a team of scientists to perform remote sensing experiments for NASA, trying to assess how to best search for microbial life on other planets.

But I always knew that academia was not for me, and when I completed my Ph.D. I took a step into the private sector, joining an environmental consulting firm, where I spent more than a decade designing and installing treatment systems to help clean up contaminated groundwater (including installing a bioreactor at the famous Hinkley site, from the “Erin Brockovich” movie), as well as serving as a consulting and testifying expert for high profile litigation matters.

Despite being really good at the consulting work, I also knew that I needed to be doing more, from a conservation perspective, to help protect our environment.

In 2014, while visiting my Dad on a tiny Caribbean island where he had moved right before retiring, I noticed loads of cruise passengers disembarking from their boat, and wandering aimlessly around town with nothing to do, before returning and leaving port. This island, Bonaire, is one of the world’s top diving destinations and the cruise passengers didn’t even get a glimpse of the magical underwater world they were so tantalizingly close to. It was this moment that spawned the vision for my new business: bringing the wonders of the underwater world to people in a more accessible and sustainable way. We quickly realized that virtual reality offers the potential for anyone to explore places that are otherwise often inaccessible – especially those frontiers of nature like the oceans and space. But VR doesn’t have to be headset based, there is also the potential to develop shared VR experiences, and that is our focus. In addition to entertaining and educating our visitors, we commit to donating 10% of all project revenues to conservation groups affiliated with our project, and have a strong social impact mission as well (youth training programs, competitions etc).

Fun fact: our doing-business-as (dba) company name “Akuario” means “aquarium” in the creole dialect Papiamentu, which is the local language of Bonaire.

I had always been interested in photography and videography, and having been scuba certified at sixteen years old, and so switching my focus to building 360 degree underwater camera rigs from GoPro cameras, and then making the jump up to professional grade 8K/360/3D cameras wasn’t a difficult one. In fact, finding a job where my creative side could flourish while bringing my passion for nature to as many people as possible, has filled a void I didn’t know I had. At this point in my life I consider myself to be an immersive underwater filmmaker with a strong science background.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I live on the mainland in Los Angeles, in Pasadena, which I really love. We are nestled right up against the San Gabriel mountains which offer so many incredible hikes with gorgeous views across the city. I would bring my visitors here to start, and give them a good orientation of the city from 6,000ft up, surrounded by gorgeous forests and otherworldly semi-arid landscapes. On a clear day you can see all the way across the channel, to Catalina Island, where our first immersive dome theater is launching in September. We would make our way across the city, stopping at countless taco trucks along the way, ending up the beach, taking in a Pacific ocean sunset. The next day, we would hop on the ferry across to Catalina Island, enjoying the upper outdoor deck with sun on our faces and the wind in our hair – excitedly pointing out pods of spinner dolphins, sealions and maybe even sighting a whale or two on the crossing. Once there, it would be my absolute pleasure to host the visitors at Catalina’s newest activity, “IMMERSED: Ocean Wonders”, the unique dome theater experience that we have worked so tirelessly to develop. The structure itself has been designed specifically to showcase our debut underwater short film that takes the audience on a one-of-a-kind journey through the world’s oceans – starting and ending in the gorgeous kelp forests of Catalina itself, with stops in Mexico, Hawaii, New Zealand, the Maldives, Mozambique, South Africa, and the Caribbean. Whale sharks, manta rays, sealions, dolphins, giant sea bass, and so many other mesmerizing encounters are all set to contemporary music. Everything in the movie was filmed in stunning 8K/360/3D and is projected onto the inside of a seamless dome theater screen that wraps all around the audience. Afterwards you can take a tour, seeing wild bison and learning about the history of the island. Dinner at one of Avalon’s famous restaurants, and a sunset walk along Crescent street will wrap up a wonderful week.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to dedicate my shoutout to my late father, Prof. Bruce Davidson. So much of who I am is shaped by my Dad, and, even though he is not here today to witness the launch of the business that was partly inspired by him, I know he would be incredibly proud. He was there when the earliest idea for this business was forming, and he would love to know where it has ended up.

Website: akuario360.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akuario360content/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akuario360

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@akuario360

Image Credits
Immersive Education LLC/Akuario