Seeing Beneath the Surface

Tomas Koeck '22 has a knack for seeing not only the bigger picture, but the deeper one, too...

From the spring 2022 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine

by Gina Pribaz

The first-graders’ task was simple: unscramble I FIVE SEE FISH to properly read I SEE FIVE FISH, and then draw those fish for the deep-sea diver in the picture. One student saw something more. “I can see 5 gretwit sharks,” he wrote, and took up his crayon to draw five serene, close-mouthed great white sharks swimming peacefully along with the diver. Not what you’d expect from a boy imagining sharks—and not what the teacher expected either. The assignment was marked "wrong" and returned with a corrective note about following directions.

Today Tomas Koeck ’22 is a senior in the School of Communication, Media & the Arts (SCMA), where seeing beyond what’s expected is finally appreciated. He has been published by the National Audubon Society, PBS Nature Channel and the Smithsonian Channel, among others, and is already an award-winning documentary filmmaker with support from Canon USA. It seems that, even 15 years after the “gretwit” shark incident, he is still possessed of a creative vision that cannot be contained. And he’s only getting started ...

It Takes Patience

Somewhere in the snow-clotted woods of the Sax-Zim Bog of northern Minnesota, a great gray owl was hunting. Koeck, in turn, was hunting her. He had been standing in frigid conditions for days, straining to detect feathers moving against columns of gray bark. His gloved finger itched to snap an image of that elusive icon of the boreal forest. Where was this bird?

Quite a lot was riding on his ability to get the image. Koeck had convinced not only his own faculty of the merits and feasibility of this great gray adventure, but several scientists and corporate supporters as well. He enlisted his father, Carl Koeck, and his uncle, Harold O’Brien, an avid birder, to accompany, assist and advise him on the 2,700-mile round-trip odyssey. Heading out in a pickup truck full of expensive camera equipment and optimism, the three found themselves stuck overnight at a rest stop in Ohio when a blizzard forced them off the highway. Bundled up in the cab of the truck, the trio slept out the storm before pushing onward. 

By Day Three of No Owls, the men, however committed to the project, were really feeling the cold. Koeck was feeling the stress. There was a Plan B, of course—in documentary filmmaking, there always must be a Plan B—but Koeck had done all he could to put himself in the best position to achieve his goal. He wanted that great gray to tell the story of the boreal forest. Settling for anything less would not quite satisfy.

It was 4:30 in the morning and negative 20 degrees on Day Four when Koeck and company drove out to the meadow to once again begin their predawn vigil. Snow crowded earth and sky, piling four feet deep on either side of the trail. Just as the sun was beginning to rise, O’Brien thought he saw a wing sweep the air. The Koecks followed him along some abandoned train tracks to a clearing, and there, 100 feet away on a beautiful black spruce, perched a magnificent great gray owl.

She was facing away, intent on hunting. Great grays can hear the minute sounds of a vole’s footfall beneath the snowpack, and they wait for it with exquisite patience. This was exactly what the men had been working and waiting and freezing for—the whole point of the quest. Yet Koeck’s reaction surprised even himself. He halted, transfixed, he says, by “a flawless beauty that wasn’t trying to get anyone’s attention.” It was the kind of beauty that can make an ordinary moment holy. Camera in hand, Koeck simply stood and gazed with his own two eyes. “I wanted to let the image mature in me before I froze it in time. It was a moment of pure connection to the world we live in.”

That moment of connection is everything to Koeck, and the thing he most wants to share with his audience. It’s why he strives so hard to capture animal “personality” on film—that moment when an animal goes from just being an object of study and becomes a life, rich and complex and very much worth protecting.

Koeck became aware of frantic tapping on his shoulder and urgent whispers of his father and uncle at his ear. “What are you doing? Take the shot!”

He calmly adjusted his settings for the low light of the snowy dawn. Koeck leveled his lens and began shooting. As if on cue, the great gray swiveled her invisible neck to look right at Koeck with her piercing yellow eyes.

1. Gotcha.
2. Gotcha.

The Importance of Being Different

Perhaps Tomas Koeck is so protective of nature because it was always protective of him.

“I was definitely different,” he says, thinking back to his younger days. The disconnect of classroom social life propelled him out into the woods to hike and fish and immerse himself in a different kind of experience where he could be himself. “While other kids were playing with Gameboys, I was reading field guides,” he recalls, a habit he had picked up from his mother’s science-minded family. “My family was always there for me,” Koeck says, “especially when it was a little bit lonely at school.”

At SHU, Koeck finally found professors and mentors who would appreciate his vision and treat him like family. James Castonguay, associate dean of SCMA, recognizes the maturity of Koeck’s aesthetic and marvels at his instincts. The story of Koeck’s journey into the recesses of northern Minnesota, for example, just to catch a glimpse of the great gray owl for his documentary Sentinels of the Boreal, goes back much further than the young filmmaker’s initial pitch of the idea. As Castonguay points out, Koeck started as a beginner accomplishing his coursework. In his community journalism class, he took advantage of a partnership SCMA developed with the Easton Courier to write a weekly column called “A Sunday Nature Walk.” “He gets these amazing shots right in our backyard,” says Castonguay. This consistently demonstrated potential made it much easier to support his idea for the road-trip documentary.

As a result, says Castonguay, not only did Koeck get his owl, but the bird mugged for the camera. “Tomas got that shot because he worked hard to get it. At some point you have to say it’s not luck.

“I think Tomas is a great example of the student who takes the University and faculty at our word,” he adds. “Please challenge us. Take advantage of the resources here.” Resources, Castonguay says, include world-class facilities, deep talent in faculty and professionals working in the industry, a robust curriculum that delves into both history and theory and an emphasis on roll-up-your-sleeves applied learning. “Squeeze all the juice out,” he says. “Tomas has done that, and even pushed us.”

Into the Deep

When Mary Jo Koeck saw her son’s first-grade shark picture, she had it framed as an emblem of his free-thinking creativity. Now it’s also a self-portrait.

For his senior project, Koeck wanted to dive with sharks. He hates how they are caricatured in the media. From The Old Man and the Sea and Jaws to The Meg, sharks are portrayed almost exclusively as man’s enemy. Koeck urgently wanted to tell a different story. To make that happen, he would have to go the extra mile, and then some.

His shoot locations—Block Island, Guadalupe Island, the Florida Keys—spanned the continent. He had to learn to scuba dive. He connected with several major shark conservancy organizations. He catalyzed collaboration across the University and even managed to get alum and SHU marketing & communications videographer Eric Torrens ’19 (see sidebar) to agree to be his cameraman and project coordinator. Torrens recounts a moment of mental recalibration when, during their odyssey to Guadalupe Island, Koeck pulled out a laptop to catch up on homework. “I almost forgot that he’s still a student!” Torrens says.

Arriving off Guadalupe, then finally submerged in the blue abyss and puffing on a regulator, it was time to wait. Sharks’ skin uses countershading—light on the bottom and dark on top—camouflaging their presence from above and below. It makes them surprisingly difficult to distinguish from the surrounding blue. A shark could be anywhere.

Or worse, nowhere. An apex predator is critical to the health of its environment, and Koeck knows well that an ocean where sharks are nowhere is a dying ocean—a driving reason for wanting to make his film in the first place. But overcoming humans’ collective fear of sharks involves learning to understand them as complex creatures. “That’s why I wanted to capture the eyes,” he says.

Finally, out of that nowhere, a curious 16-foot female great white appeared. Sharks can be recognized by the unique scars that life leaves on them—perhaps not altogether unlike people —and this one was known to the expedition crew. Circling the boat in an ever-tightening orbit, she finally got close enough for Koeck to see the blue pupil of her eye.

Looking Ahead

How peaceful these creatures really are, and how much we as species need one another, is the story told in his new documentary, Keepers of the Blue. He was inspired by his cousin, Dave Manoni, a diver and fellow ecological evangelist. Manoni, Koeck’s brother Samuel, a marine biologist, and diver Craig Honeycutt, Manoni’s father-in-law, are collaborating on the project. Keepers of the Blue is slated for release on Earth Day this year.

Koeck does not make documentaries to fascinate or even to merely educate viewers. He wants them to see what he can see, feel what he feels, love what he loves. His success in this effort so far has a lot to do with his penchant for lighting a spark of excitement that brings people together. To that end, Koeck has partnered with the Sacred Heart University Discovery Science Center & Planetarium (formerly the Discovery Museum & Planetarium)to help promote the film and assist in presenting it to the community, particularly to disadvantaged K-12 kids.

For Koeck, it’s a matter of bringing the work full circle. “As a kid, life can be hard sometimes. You’re exposed to the same things every day. You do what teachers tell you to do. You go home and play videogames. And there’s nothing wrong with that,” he says, “but it’s on repeat. Documentaries share a different part of the world, and then you get perspective and insight. I want to help kids dream of cool new places, new things they can study.”

Koeck’s interest in letting his own passion expand outward for positive social and educational uses is rewarding for his professors to see. “That’s our model at its best,” says Castonguay. “Tomas connects all the dots.”

Watch Keepers of the Blue on YouTube

Not crazy at all

They prepacked three times to make sure everything would fit: two high-end Canon mirrorless cameras, five lenses, four Go-Pros, a laptop, two hard drives and an external monitor. Eric Torrens, SHU ’19, and Tomas Koeck, SHU ’22, dragged the golf bag–sized case to the airport, where it weighed in at 65 pounds and received two labels: “heavy” and “SHU.”

It takes a lot to film great white sharks, including teamwork. Torrens, video production coordinator for SHU’s marketing & communications team, would be Koeck’s cameraman and would capture footage of Koeck in the cage. The pair lugged their gear to San Diego, hired a van to Ensenada, Mexico, and boarded an expedition boat that churned for 22 hours through six-foot swells to arrive at Guadalupe Island, where landing is off limits. “It was primal,” Torrens recalls of the location. Out there, one is completely detached from civilization, and communication is by satellite only.

He’ll never forget the sea lions, which he could only hear. Their haunting “prehistoric” chorus made a perfect soundtrack for diving with a species that coexisted with dinosaurs. When he first submerged in the cage, alone, he had to remind himself to breathe. He shot Koeck in the next cage and followed the two-ton fish as they circled ever tighter. “Wow, it’s wild,” he says. “It’s all part of being a camera person. You never know where your camera is going to take you.”

The University supported Torrens when, as a student, he wanted to make a film about his grandfather. “It’s nice to see this repeated,” he says, grateful for editing room time, loaned equipment and mentorship. He stresses the value of having your school’s backing and not only material assistance. He loves that SHU tells creatives like Koeck and him, “Yes, you can make this. We can help you. No, it’s not crazy. It’s beautiful.”

Watch Eric Torrens' "Behind the Scenes" video on YouTube.