However, the pleasure of seeing these slickly made telefilms on animals in their natural habitat can sometimes put in shade the hard work which has gone into their production as also the lurking dangers in such projects.

Take for example, Mr Mike Pandey. The man has devoted a lifetime to making wildlife-related films that have received both national and international awards.

Till recently Mr Pandey was the only Asian to have ever won the prestigious Green Oscar at the Wildscreen Festival in UK. It was for his documentary on rogue elephants of India. Now, Mr Pandey has become one of the handful of people in the world to have won the Green Oscar twice. His film, Shores of Silence-Whale Sharks in India was adjudged winner at the Wildscreen 2000 Festival in England late last year.

Born in Kenya, Mr Pandey studied film-making and cinematography in England. After working with BBC for some time, he decided to come to India, the country of his origin. That as twenty-five years ago. So taken in was he by the natural beauty of the country that he decided to settle here and make documentaries on wildlife. He soon became intimate with the wild and as his passion grew, so did the scope of his projects. One of his acclaimed films, Natural History of the Cheetah won the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

But international recognition came when The Last Migration-Wild Elephant Capture in Sarguja became the first Asian documentary to ever win a Green Oscar at Wildscreen '94, which is the world's premier festival for films on wildlife held in the UK.

Mr Pandey's last production, Shores of Silence, was one of the 47 nominated films (from 424 entries) for the Green Oscar at the Wildscreen 2000 festival. The selected movies need to have the critical elements of engaging, lucidity and compact story-telling. And Mr Pandey met all the requirements.

The gut-wrenching film documents the slaughter and trade of whale sharks on the Western coast of India. And Mr Pandey is the first Indian film-maker ever to focus on a large marine species. ``The film which was shot under extreme conditions took almost three years to complete and aims towards creating policies to support a ban on the killing and trade of whale sharks in India as well as finding sustainable alternatives for the fishermen,'' says Mr Pandey.

The Earth Matters Foundation created for the presentation of wildlife in the natural habitat has already begun it's awareness campaign to save the whale shark. The foundation is planning to use Shores of Silence to put an end to this slaughter.

Mr Pandey says that as a 10-year-old boy he had sailed from Africa to India by ship and throughout the voyage he was mesmerised by huge creatures that swam alongside the ship. ``Now nearly 40 years later, while shooting a film on coastal India in Gujarat, the memory of those creatures urged me to look for them again. I travelled all along the Gujarat coast asking fishermen if they knew of the badi machhi, the whale shark.''

But what Mr Pandey and his crew saw made them shrink in horror. And what started as a feel-good film on these gentle giants would turn out to be a tale of blood and gore. Hundreds of these sea giants are butchered on the shores of Western India every year. There is a great demand for shark meat and fins in South Asia. The oil from their livers is used to waterproof boats. Shaken by the senseless killings, Mr Pandey decided to make a feature film on these creatures. As the crew filmed in the area and met local people, the magnitude of the problem became clear.

Despite collecting enough footage, the film was not released and the massacre not exposed because Pandey wanted to get a balanced picture, and weigh the benefits to the fishermen against the damage to world ecology.

Though the prime concern of Mr Pandey and his crew was the conservation of the shark, they saw a different aspect of the dilemma that ran deep into other issues concerning mainly the socio-economic status of fishing communities.

``A solution to this may lie in the tourism potential the Gujarat coastline offers. It is one of the largest whale shark sighting sites in the world.

Exploring the tourism angle could provide the solution or both the survival of the whale sharks as well be a source of income generation for fishermen,'' says Mr Pandey.

Shores of Silence makes an impassioned plea for the setting up of a whale shark sanctuary. Given the frequent sightings on the Gujarat coast, these waters are of international significance and declaring them as a sanctuary would help protect this vulnerable species. Fishermen could augment their income by doubling up as tourist guides for visitors eager for a shark sighting.

Mr Pandey is in his elements when he talks about what should be done to save whale sharks from perishing at the hands of mankind. Says he, ``The ocean is relatively a new horizon for humanity. Management of marine resources at this point is critical to avoid abusing what mistakenly appears to be a limitless resource zone.'' ``Man,'' he says, ``has interfered with nature's delicate balance. We have ruptured the system and if it continues, we may pay the price with our own extinction.''

-Newsmen Features