Mike deGruy — American Director born on December 29, 1951, died on February 04, 2012

Mike deGruy was an American documentary filmmaker specialising in underwater cinematography. His credits include Life in the Freezer, Trials of Life, The Blue Planet and Pacific Abyss. He was also known for his storytelling, most notably, a passionate TED talk about his love of the ocean on the Mission Blue Voyage. His company, Film Crew Inc., specialized in underwater cinematography, filming for BBC, PBS, National Geographic, and The Discovery Channel. His notable accomplishments include diving beneath thermal vents in both the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean. He was a member of many deep sea expeditions and was a part of the team that first filmed the vampire squid and the nautilus. He was also part of the Deepsea Challenge, where James Cameron went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench... (wikipedia)

I grew up in Mobile, Alabama - somebody's got to be from Mobile, right? - and Mobile sits at the confluence of five rivers, forming this beautiful delta. And the delta has alligators crawling in and out of rivers filled with fish and cypress trees dripping with snakes, birds of every flavor.
If you ever really want to get away from it all and see something that you have never seen, and have an excellent chance of seeing something no one has ever seen, get in a sub. You climb in, seal the hatch, turn on a little oxygen, turn on the scrubber, which removes the CO2 in the air you breathe, and they chuck you overboard. Down you go.
If you're going to make a lot of films about a particular group of animals, you might as well pick one that's fairly common. And octopus are: they live in all the oceans. They also live deep. And I can't say octopus are responsible for my really strong interest in getting in subs and going deep, but whatever the case, I like that.
If you're a wildlife filmmaker and you're going out into the field to film animals, especially behavior, it helps to have a fundamental background on who these animals are, how they work and, you know, a bit about their behaviors.