Dan Mele Photography

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Charlotte Amalie
Dan Mele Photography

Mission:

Photography and film are large mediums which bring adventure to our living rooms. Bio:
My name is Dan Mele.
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My personal goal is to share images of the natural world and non-staged moments that are unique to the time an image was taken. With wildlife photography, I believe it's important to share more than just a pretty picture. Informing the audience of the biology relating to the subject is imperative. The need for conservation is constantly on the rise with the amount of habitat destruction that occur

s throughout the world. I'm currently pursuing my 2nd degree at UNCA in ecology and evolution. My first degree was at University of Tampa where I studied film production. i'm truly grateful to have two passions that I can use together. I first got interested in film and photography in 9th grade when I began shooting my friends skateboarding. While school wasn't always top on my list, today I have a new love for learning and challenging myself in and out of the classroom. I find it fascinating what drives behavior and interactions between all aspects of life, whether its animals or humans.

27/11/2024

Tonight’s the night!

NOVA/PBS BUILDING STUFF: CHANGE IT! premieres tonight at 9pm ET/CT/PT on PBS, streaming on pbs.org/nova and at NOVA on YouTube!

This episode explores exciting new ways engineers are working to help the environment.

“Humans have been altering Earth’s environment for thousands of years. And now, from electric planes to artificial noses, engineers are inventing new ways to preserve our planet.”

This was such a fun project to be a part of and contribute a few underwater clips to! This photo is from an earlier shoot when they were testing the robot. For the NOVA footage, I filmed everything while freediving. The robot was listening to the reef and making decisions based on the sounds it picked up, so the noise from a SCUBA diver next to it could have thrown it off.

BUILDING STUFF: CHANGE IT! is a NOVA Production by Pellet Productions, Inc. for GBH. Written, Produced and Directed by Theresa Loong. Series Producer is Anthony Manupelli. Executive Producer for Pellet Productions is Tod Mesirow. Co-produced by Guisel Contreras and Ruby Kinnamon.

ocean

21/11/2024

I’ve had zero time for creating well thought out IG posts lately, so here’s another shot from our recent trip to the Pantanal with The Jaguar ID Project ().

In this region, the Jaguars regularly hunt caimans, which is wild to see one top predator hunt another top predator. While this attempt didn’t result in a kill, it was a thrill to witness.

Check out the to learn more about their important work in the Pantanal of Brazil!

09/11/2024

Save the dates!

11/13
11/20
11/27

Last year, I had the incredible opportunity to work on an episode of NOVA (). Growing up, I watched this show with my family, so contributing to one of their docu-series episodes, “Building Stuff,” was especially meaningful to me.

Although every episode is worth watching, the one I contributed to will premiere on 11/27 at 9 pm EST on PBS (). Our segment features scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (.ocean) and their efforts to train underwater robots for various coral reef monitoring missions. I filmed the underwater footage and captured some of the drone shots for this segment.

Each episode will premiere on the above dates at 9pm EST. You can also stream via the NOVA YouTube channel where viewers can talk about the episode.

Nova YouTube Channel
https://youtube.com/?si=805jJVbV3gr_fvkR

Shoutout to Guisel Contreras, Theresa Loong, .hanley, and Susan Bryant for being so much fun to work with on this shoot!

05/11/2024

A little break from the usual underwater photos to share some images from a recent trip to Brazil.

Caroline and I spent several days going out with the in the Pantanal. It’s still hard to wrap my head around all the amazing wildlife we saw, but it was even better to spend time with the researchers working to learn more about the Jaguars in the region.

Plenty of images to share soon but go ahead and follow to learn more about their work!

11/10/2024

I grew up being scared of the ocean.

That’s kind of a strange thing for an underwater photographer to say. Don’t confuse that with a lack of fascination for the ocean. I always loved sharks, coral reefs and marine life, but growing up in suburban Maryland, I always had this idea that sharks were all over the place in the ocean waiting to eat me when I entered. I even remember on a family vacation to Mexico as a teenager, not wanting to get out of a kayak to snorkel on the reef because of the fear of the unknown.

I’m pretty sure I always knew my fear was mostly irrational, but it took repeated exposure to get over it. And after many years of living in coastal areas, and lots of diving, now when I see a shark (which is incredibly rare), I’m trying to remain calm so it will feel comfortable to come close enough for a decent photo. 99% of the time, they scurry off as soon as you spot them.

With that said, I do think it’s important to have a healthy dose of fear and respect when around any apex predator.

I took this photo earlier this year when shooting for while diving the wreck of the RMS Rhone.

19/09/2024

While marine debris sometimes drifts into the U.S. Virgin Islands from distant places, the majority of it actually comes from local sources, impacting our coastal ecosystems.

Over the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside the amazing teams at .usvi.mangroves and .vi as they tackle the cleanup of some of our most stunning and difficult to access habitats, including offshore cays and mangrove forests.

We’ll be sharing a short video soon, showcasing their efforts and the tremendous impact they’re having on preserving these vital environments.

14/09/2024

One of my favorite wildlife encounters recently was while shooting for , when we came across a pair of mating nurse sharks.

Nurse shark mating can look a bit intense, with the male biting onto the female’s pectoral fin as they twist and thrash for several minutes.

Looking forward to next year as I plan to return to shoot this scene underwater.

02/09/2024

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work with BVI Wreck Week () to dive and photograph the shipwrecks of the British Virgin Islands.

There’s so much to share from this week, but here’s an initial photo dump to thank some of the many supporters of the event.

Huge shoutout to , .caribbean.divers, , and for taking us on some incredible dives!

Big thanks to for providing us with a boat that made this trip possible!

This week wouldn’t have been half as fun if it weren’t for our awesome crew: Captain Jerry, , and !

I’ll be sharing a lot more from this trip soon!

28/08/2024

Earlier this year on a trip around the British Virgin Islands shooting for BVI Wreck Week, we made a stop on Anegada to team up with to help out on a beach cleanup.

Little did I know, it was also nurse shark mating season, and when I launched my drone, there were several sharks swimming around each other in just a few feet of water. Lots to share from this trip soon but here’s a few to get it started.

23/08/2024

I’m excited to have collaborated with fellow Emerging League member Bing Lin (.abloom) on our recent publication in Inside Climate News (), where we explore the spread of the invasive seagrass species, Halophila stipulacea, and how it’s taking over the Caribbean.

In most cases, the negative impacts of invasive species on ecosystems are evident, but the story of Halophila is more complex. Its invasion presents a nuanced situation where we must consider both the harms and potential benefits it may bring.

Check out the full story, written by Bing and photographed by me, through the link below!

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23082024/invasive-seagrass-species-halophila-stipulacea/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYfVx-txge4oGMcBMNJIJcze36NuliIe7FViuWrwr8nAGckKyJ5Ta7xA_Y_aem_04kaiE7zVJOS64KNNQaUyg

23/05/2024

The hillsides of the U.S. Virgin Islands are steep and rocky. During heavy rainstorms, the watersheds come alive, channeling water into the ephemerally flowing guts, the islands’ natural veins. The guts of the U.S. Virgin Islands have historically been understudied, leaving much to be discovered about them. How much sediment flows through the guts during storms? What does this sediment contain? And how does it impact our coastal marine environments? Excitingly, my next video project for VI-EPSCoR () will delve into these questions and showcase the researchers working to find the answers. I’m thrilled to explore some of the freshwater environments of the U.S. Virgin Islands!

09/05/2024

Coral reefs are incredibly complex. Even as someone who researches them, there are still so many unanswered questions we have. Making sense of an image of a coral reef is equally challenging to the untrained eye. At first glance you see a partially bleached Elkhorn Coral and that’s probably where you’re getting most of your information from this image, but let’s dig a little deeper.

Look closely at the bleached coral. Only the top half is bleached. This is an example where high temperatures accompanied with too much UV light will stress out the coral but the parts in shade that are receiving less light are still full of color. This process is shown at a closer scale in the next photo of a Staghorn Coral.

Next, your eyes might have taken you to the purple sea fan. But again, look closer and you’ll see a ton of tiny little orange things. Swipe to the third photo to get a closer look. What you see are several very tiny brittle stars. Most are likely clones as they can reproduce asexually. Unfortunately these brittle stars are invasive and have been slowly spreading throughout the Caribbean over the last 20 years. In some cases they can choke out sea fans, preventing them from opening their polyps to feed.

Finally, where your eyes probably didn’t take you is that little orange crusty algae spot a little below the sea fan. This is a type of encrusting algae called Ramicrusta. In the final photo you’ll see what happens when Ramicrusta comes into contact with corals. For most slow growing coral species, the Ramicrusta can grow right over the coral tissue and smother it out.

Now for some good news! This Elkhorn coral survived the bleaching event last year with only partial mortality. The sea fan, despite being covered in invasive sea stars, still looks healthy for the time being. For that little patch of Ramicrusta, we can outplant species like Elkhorn Coral over top of it which can grow faster than the algae and smother it.

22/04/2024

Happy Earth Day! 🌎

Throwback to 9 years ago when two flies decided to get down on the back of my old Honda Accord.

Everyday is earth day.

18/04/2024

Still working on underwater macro, which the more I do, the more I realize how challenging it is.

Last week, I had a fun encounter with what I believe is an Atlantic Longarm Octopus (Macrotritopus defilippi). I’m no octo expert so feel free to correct me if you think otherwise.

This was definitely one of the most tolerant octopuses I’ve photographed that was out of its den. Cared little for my presence and I got a good 10 minutes with it before leaving it to do its thing.

17/04/2024

If you haven’t seen the video that and I made on the St. Thomas East End Reserves (STEER) for the Department of Planning and Natural Resources (.vi), go check out my last post!

This was such a fun project to work on, I wanted to share a few stills and BTS.

Contrary to what you might think, living on a small island means it can be challenging to find green spaces that are peaceful, and quiet. Exploring STEER showed me that these environments do exist on St. Thomas. With motor boats not being allowed to enter the mangrove lagoon area, we could only explore by kayak. This meant packing all our camera gear in our laps and paddling to our shoot locations. Thanks to for providing the kayaks!

Big shout out to (📸5) for creating the dream team for this project. Learned a ton from working with them!

For some shots we had to get a little creative. The baby lemon sharks wanted nothing to do with us when we were in the water so I set my camera up on an underwater tripod (📸7), got out, and let it film for a few hours. After reviewing the footage, we only had one usable shot of a shark swimming by but it made the final cut!

I definitely plan on exploring this area a lot more and hope to see you out there!

17/03/2024

Congratulations to , and the .ocean team as their research on how sound impacts coral larvae settlement has gained lots of public attention.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/scientists-underwater-speakers-restore-degraded-coral-reefs-study/story?id=108007057&fbclid=PAAaaa6naga5rszq8HYt95XgY7wRfCBn274XccL7pg---79Jm69hseePznVf8_aem_AQrsvJs8KpRH8pMOhMhtovOeT0u_usllBtLWpJNl_UuubTGtHdIb8o5ZxZCl1TjlVAA

PM me for more articles on this work!

By placing underwater speakers on degraded reefs that were playing sounds of healthy reefs, they found that coral larvae were more than twice as likely to settle closer to the speaker than further away. This indicates that coral larvae can pick up on cues and prefer to settle on a healthy reef environment. While this research is still ongoing, the potential is there to one day use sound to help restore degraded reef sites by attracting coral larvae.

Coral restoration is complex and requires a huge tool bag. The more techniques we have gives us the best fighting chance of keeping reefs alive and building them back in a rapidly changing world.

03/03/2024

It’s Nassau Grouper spawning season, so that means Dr. Rick Nemeth and Shaun Kadison are out there monitoring the groupers U.S. Virgin Islands spawning aggregation.

These are some of my favorite dives. Not only do we get to see some fascinating fish behavior, it’s a story where you can see conservation efforts working. Once overfished, the Nassau Grouper spawning aggregation has gone from just a few dozen fish to sometimes seeing over 1,000. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and challenges threaten this upward trend.

Read all about it in the latest article from and .

International League of Conservation Photographers ILCP

https://www.viepscor.org/news/usvi-nassau-grouper-recovery-and-treachery

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Charlotte Amalie
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http://www.danmelephotography.com/

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Videos

Very excited to share our video on the St. Thomas East End Reserve (STEER)! STEER is a collection of marine reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and marine protected areas that’s managed by the Department of Planning and Natural Resources (@dpnr.vi). This space is ecologically, economically, and culturally important to the Virgin Islands and is there for us to enjoy and utilize responsibly. Big shout out to @islandmediaco who I partnered with on this project. We spent several days kayaking and snorkeling amongst the mangroves and coral reefs to film this project. I’m sure I speak for both of us that we’ll definitely be spending more time out there!