If it's wet and wild, Monty Halls will go to the ends of the earth to find it, writes Claire Keeton Monty Halls has no problem jumping into a rough ocean bristling with thousands of dolphins, sharks and other predators, all competing in a feeding frenzy for sardines. The British explorer, wildlife presenter and former Royal Marine is more at ease in water than on land.story_article_left1During an expedition to the heights of Borneo, a guide saw that marine biologist Halls, 48, was out of his comfort zone and called him "a fish up a tree". He would much rather be submerged.So would cameraman and his right-hand man on the sardine run, Doug Allan, a 64-year-old marine biologist who has spent five winters and nine summers filming the depths beneath Antarctica's ice sheet.Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough once said: "Capturing animal behaviour in extreme and hostile places takes a very special kind of cameraman and they don't come more special than Doug Allan ... no one knows the frozen world better than him."Of the sardine trip, which ended in the Eastern Cape this week, Halls said: "It's a tremendous experience, but it's something I'm used to. Others on the trip were frightened in the water, but for us it's a day at the office."Allan is famous for filming polar bears, which he describes as "charismatic, big, sexy animals who will eat you if you don't know what you are about". He was once almost taken by a walrus while snorkelling. It wrapped its flippers around his waist and tried to drown him, but Allan bonked it on the head with his camera and got away. All in a day's work.On another snorkelling trip with humpback whales, his ex-wife was filming him eye-to-eye with a whale when the flick of a giant tail sent her flying. Allan's instinct was to save the camera.full_story_image_hleft1Back on the sardine boat, the two men - who shoot and present for BBC, Discovery Channel and others - leap in and out of the huge swell in gathering darkness."Yesterday we sat for hours chumming for sharks off Coffee Bay and had nothing," says Halls. "We were grumpy. Then Louis [van Aardt, the skipper] suggested we just jump in. We dropped into the blue and when we looked down there were bronzies everywhere."Scientist Meaghan McCord got to tag the copper shark (or bronze whaler) for research and they got their shark shots. The only thing they did not get during five days at sea during the 14-day sardine run was sardines."We got really close to the baitball action - diving gannets, Bryde's whales, dolphins," says Halls. "But every time we got in, the baitball dissipated, so the one thing we have not seen is sardines."mini_story_image_vleft2That, they say, is simply the nature of expeditions. Sometimes they get lucky. Allan spent weeks looking for a snow leopard in northern India and got to watch one for an hour. It was sleeping for 50 of those 60 minutes, but still.In Belize, Halls and cameraman Dave Bowden managed to get the first underwater footage of a rare Morelet's crocodile after it almost capsized the inflatable kayak ahead of theirs. They had been about to give up their search."As we paddled away miserably one night, the bloke in front of us shot about four feet in the air," says Halls. "There was a Morelet's underneath which had whacked the bottom. When we shone our torch into the water the crocodile looked at us rather grimly."Dave put his camera in the water expecting to die and took the first ever underwater photos of a Morelet's."Exploring pristine terrain is not for cowards. While filming for the Lost Worlds series in Borneo, Halls conquered his vertigo to ascend a sheer cliff, only to find himself sharing a coffin-shaped cave with hundreds of scorpions. "I got slightly more wildlife than I bargained for," he says. "I slept about 10 minutes that night."In Guyana's rainforest, the man who discovered a sunken city off India had to sleep in a hammock 50m off the ground.Of all the places he has travelled, South Africa is his favourite. In 1995 he was part of a group of British military officers overseeing the integration of ANC soldiers into the old SADF. "That was the start of my love affair with South Africa," says Halls. He feels comfortable here, especially in the water...