CHASING GHOSTS
A Quest Deep in Florida's Remote Swamps
If you’ve ever wondered about plant life in the Florida swamps, then you’ll want to check out the short film Chasing Ghosts. The film follows a group of conservation photographers, filmmakers, and explorers as they spend three summers trying to photograph an endangered orchid and find out what pollinates it. If they do, then maybe they’ll be able to save it.
The group hoped to achieve this goal by setting up camera traps in a swamp and sleeping nearby to monitor them. The first orchid they come across is called the “super ghost.” It can have up to 16 flowers blooming at once, and the group mentions how many moths are probably attracted to it. To search for and photograph the ghost orchid, part of the group ascends a large tree to discover a camouflaged sphinx moth.
Meanwhile, another member of the group travels through alligator-infested waters to find the ghost orchid. Camera traps were placed around trees in the swamp and the water. One of the photographers who had gone into the giant tree, Mac Stone, finds that the camera had captured the first-ever photo of a grand sphinx moth pollinating a ghost orchid. The water camera traps also managed to capture a picture of a moth and a ghost orchid.
At the end of this journey, five large moth species, 6,800 camera trap hours, and 52,173 images were captured. The group’s discoveries could be helpful in the study of pollination and saving endangered ghost orchids and other endangered species. Chasing Ghosts can be streamed here on Vimeo.
