LES PERKINS: Here are some of the photographers from Mysteries of the Deep.
ROY E. DISNEY: Verne and Harry Pederson, I’m sure. These two guys were out there on this reef, in the Bahamas, and they had a boat up there with an oxygen pump and they would just take the camera down twenty feet down by the reef and sit there all day, sucking on oxygen and just waiting to shoot whatever came along. Half the movie was made up of that stuff.
LP: Were they down there the same time as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?
RD: It was very close to the same time. Whether it exactly coincided or not, I can’t remember. I inherited all that footage. I was the lucky guy that got to put all that together. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it. And trying to make up a story that went with what do fish do… [Laughs] […]