Not to mention the famous moment of grace that he shared with one of the most powerful predators on the planet, a young polar bear with a playful temperament that played with him like a puppy, looking at itself in the lens mirror and actually putting its nose to the camera! “When you exit the water after connecting like this with animals, you weep for joy” he says. Last summer, Joe Bunni encountered another kind of joy that was just as fulfilling in Indonesian Papua. He succeeded in bringing together 13 village chiefs receptive to the idea of
challenging the local ancestral practice of hunting the leatherback turtle (threatened with extinction) in return for support in creating goat farms and even possibly developing marine parks to observe these 200 kilogram mammals in idyllic settings
Joy? Joe Bunni also knows how to share it, notably with his patients, who are delighted to be treated by the most adventurous dentist imaginable, as they watch a flow of dreamy images screened on the ceiling!
by Michèle Wouters
