Nautilus Films is run by Maurice Melzak, an independent documentary film maker.

I am a zoology graduate my first opportunities in television came in researching documentaries for people like Sir David Attenborough and Gerald Durrell. I then went on to produce and direct my own films. They have included a QED on street pigeons, an Encounters on rabies and an Equinox on aquariums. Many of my films have examined aspects of urban wildlife, often featuring the perspectives of people like pest controllers, zookeepers and city vets.

“Josie’s Journey” was a film I made for BBC1, about Dr Shaun Russell and his daughter Josie. Josie Russell survived an attack in rural Kent in which her mother Lin, sister Megan and pet dog Lucy were killed. Her dramatic recovery and photogenic smile led her to become a media icon and source of inspiration to many people. The film told the story of Josie’s recovery, a trip she and Shaun made to the place Josie was born, South Africa, and it also looked at the crime itself.

This film sparked off my interest in forensic science and more recently I made a series for FIVE about a school for crime scene investigators - the National Forensic Academy, based in Knoxville, Tennessee.

At the NFA I met the people who run the “Body Farm”, the world famous facility where the various processes of human decomposition are studied by forensic anthropologists, entomologists and chemists. Many murders have been solved using their pioneering research and I secured access to make a one hour special about this amazing place. I then went on to make a film called The Natural History of Murder – looking at how a whole range of natural science specialities can be used in crime scene investigation.

I won a Gold Medal at the International Film and TV Festival of New York, for a corporate film I made about wildlife and power stations and I’ve published a book and a number of articles on marine biology and marine aquariums.

I also self-shoot and edit shorter films for the internet and have made a number of films for various charites.

On a personal note, besides an Airedale terrier and a wildlife pond, I also keep bees. It is a surprise to many people that there are beekeepers in London but in fact urban bees tend to do quite well.  Unlike in the countryside, which may have vast monocultures of oilseed rape, towns and cities contain parks and gardens with an abundance of flowers and trees that blossom from early spring to late autumn. Most of these plants are not covered in pesticides and other agricultural chemicals, and this can only help too.

Honeybees have been in the news a great deal recently, sadly for all the wrong reasons.  All over the UK (and in Europe and the US) honeybees are dying and colonies are being lost at an alarming rate. This is a huge concern as the pollination of crops by honeybees is worth millions to the British economy. They pollinate apples, pears, runner beans and soft fruits like strawberries and raspberries.

Though pollution and climate change have been implicated, the main reason for the losses seems to be Varroa, a parasitic mite that sucks the blood of the bees and can introduce viral infections at the same time. All hives are affected to some extent and the result can be much less honey produced or, even worse, a colony to weak to sustain itself. Varroa has now wiped-out virtually all wild colonies of bees, so beekeepers are the only way honey bees are maintained in London, or anywhere else.

So beekeepers are doing their best to keep their colonies going in the hope that there will be proper funding for research that might offer some solution to this and the many other threats honey bees are facing.

Bees are such remarkable insects in the way the colony is organised. The single queen lays hundreds of eggs each day and the worker bees are her daughters. The workers are able to understand another worker’s 'bee dance', which pinpoints the exact location of a promising source of pollen and nectar, up to three miles from the hive.