Swimming With Sharks: Photographing the Ocean’s Top Predators (Part 1)

What I'd like to share with you this evening is
some of my latest work for National Geographic about sharks.
Or as we say where I come from in Massachusetts, sharks.
Over the last two years I've worked on
four separate projects.
Four separate stories about the top predatory species
of sharks on planet earth.
And the idea was, this was done in hopes
by running em as Greg said, by running these stories
consecutively in the magazine, we ran three of em,
one more upcoming.
The idea was to sort of give these animals
somewhat of a makeover.
I think the hope at least my hope was to change
or replace fear with respect.
Because nobody respects sharks more than I do.
Believe me, nobody respects sharks more than me.
But what I also wanted to do tonight,
in addition to showing some of this brand new work
or the latest work was to include some earlier work
that might give a little context to these new stories
because for me sharks have been sort of this life long
pursuit, something that has fascinated me
for a very long time and I wanted to sort of give
context to how I arrived at these new stories
by looking at some of the early stuff.
I actually saw my very first shark in the wild,
back in 1982.
It was off the coast of Rhode Island in very murky waters
out there, I was about 20 years old at the time
and I had been invited to join a group of marine biologists
that were doing their own sort of little private trips
out there and they were lead by a scientist named
West Pratt, who built his own shark cage,
sort of this little chicken wire cage that he made.
And he would go off shore and put a little chum in the water
and hope to see mostly blue sharks.
So I can remember standing in that cage
just below the surface on sort of a mildly rough day
and waiting for hours just staring out into the gloom,
hoping to see a shark.
I was just about ready to give up hope
when at about four o' clock that afternoon,
that first shark appeared.
It was a female blue shark, about six feet long.
And the instant I saw her, I was both instantly amazed
and sort of hypnotized, stunned by that beautiful
blue color that they have on their backs,
sort of glowed in that afternoon light.
Without really thinking about I, opened the door
of the shark cage and swam outside.
Because the shark wasn't coming close enough to the cage
and I really wanted to get close and to make pictures.
The scientist later told me that I was the first person
to ever swim outside the cage, but I just had to get close,
I needed to be up close to this animal.
Now my heart was racing in those moments,
there was a real mix of emotions.
On one hand I was thinking, what do I do if she comes at me?
What do I do if she tries to bite me?
And on the other hand I was just so thrilled
to finally be out there in the middle of the ocean
with this gorgeous animal.
She moved elegantly through the water,
sort of meandering her way around,
coming pretty close at times
and clearly aware of my presence but really paid me
little attention.
It was as if she was on her own mission,
some ancient journey that didn't include me
and I was just a momentary distraction.
After a few minutes,
she sort of just moved away from me
and swam toward the boat.
And I watched her glide into the shadows and then disappear
into that late day light.
She was gone.
And once again I found myself, sort of just,
drifting alone in that emerald green sea,
feeling like I was waking up from a dream
and wondering if it was all really true,
if this had really happened, this first encounter.
Now the first encounter that I had with a wild shark
as I said happened when I was about 20 years old.
That was four years after I became a certified scuba diver.
My very first C card right here.
I was about 16 years old.
Kinda stunning actually how little I've changed
since I was 16.
But I became a diver because I had this deep desire
to explore the ocean and to photograph animals like sharks.
That was a big reason why I wanted to become a diver.
And until I had that first experience with the blue shark,
these animals seemed almost like mythical creatures to me,
like a unicorn.
I'd read about them but until you actually are in their
presence, it doesn't really seem real.
So that first experience with the blue shark,
had me completely hooked, no pun intended.
I really knew that I needed more,
that I wanted more.
There was something about these animals
that captivated me, that fascinated me
and I knew I had to get back out into the sea
as often as I could.
Just brief moments even with these animals.
They're difficult to photograph
and it takes a lot to get out there and see them but,
I knew that if I could just get out there a little bit more,
maybe I could satisfy that desire.
I think part of what attracted me to these animals
was the fact that many species of sharks off course
are powerful predators.
Big apex predators.
And there's an attraction to that.
I wanted to experience that for myself up close.
For those of you who have dived with sharks,
I think you can attest to the fact that,
there is this seductive blend of grace and power
that sort of exudes from these animals.
It's palpable when you're in their presence.
But as a photographer, I also became somewhat obsessed
with sharks from a visual perspective.
Throughout millions of years, nature has sculpted
these animals to be perfect, for life in the sea.
These very hydrodynamic bodies.
For me they became a subject that I just wanted to
constantly photograph and always wanted to try to showcase.
I wanted to get that ultimate shark photo.
To really show their beautiful shape and form.
And there's many different types of sharks
so it was a lofty goal.
About a decade after I made
that very first blue shark picture,
I had that very first encounter in 1982 in the mid nineties,
I made this photo of another blue shark near my home
in New England and I went into the water
that particular day wanting to make a picture
that really showed and accentuated their exquisite contours.
This was an animal that truly has been sculpted
and has that beautiful long slender body
and those beautiful big pectoral fins
that help it glide through the ocean.
It was a bright sunny day but in order to make
that photograph I selected a very high aperture
to turn the background sort of black
and just lit the dorsal side of the animal
as it passed below me.
That little red thing streaming off the dorsal fin
is actually a parasitic copepod
a little pelagic hitchhiker that was adding a dash
of red color to the otherwise blue background.
So as my work evolved and continued with sharks
I continued to focus on these forms and shapes,
looking at individual body parts.
The dorsal fin of a lemon shark.
In this case adorned with a trio of remoras,
these parasite fish.
Or the giant unusual head of a great hammer head shark.
Very bizarre looking animal that almost looks prehistoric
but scientists actually tell us that these are animals
that are more evolved than other species of sharks
because their nostrils have separated out
to either side of that giant hammer head
and they sort of have stereoscopic smell.
They're a little bit of a one upmanship in the game
of evolution in the ocean.
And I also sort of developed this fascination
with shark tails.
Most photographers off course wanna photograph the mouth
or the front end of the shark but,
I became really attracted, sort of hypnotized
by the tails.
Many species like this tiger shark
or Makos and Great Whites which we'll see
shortly have these exquisite tails
and a really powerful tail
and you know now with digital photography
I had the luxury of being able to shoot more frames,
not relegated to 36 on a roll of film
so I could experiment more and take these kinds of pictures
and sort of satisfy this weird obsession I have
with shark tails.
But one of the other things that was important to me,
one of the things that I tried to do with photography
was to make pictures that allowed us
or allowed animals like sharks to sort of display
their exceptional biology.
Sharks have evolved over hundreds of millions of years,
they haven't really changed in hundreds of millions of years
because they're perfect for their life in the ocean.
But I wanted to make images that would allow
lets say the text in a story
to talk about some of these features,
like their eyes.
Most sharks have eyes that are exceptionally good
in dark water.
We know that a cat can see really good in dark light
but sharks can see twice as good as the cat can.
And these animals have skin that is made up of
millions of tiny little teeth,
they're called dermal denticles but they're very
hydrodynamic and help the animal efficiently swim
through the ocean and I don't know
if you can see in the photo but they've also evolved
these little dots on their nose, on their snout there.
These are called ampullae of Lorenzini and they're a nerve
ending that allows the shark to detect electrical impulses
in the water like the beating heart of a fish.
So if they're hunting in very murky water
where eye sight doesn't work,
they can use those ampullae of Lorenzini
to hone in on their prey so just amazing predators
and being able to make pictures
that allowed the text to talk about that was important.
And in terms of evolution I also wanted to show
that you know, a shark is not as a shark as a shark,
that they've all developed and evolved morphologically
for the environment that they happen to inhabit.
And even with things like their teeth,
they're not all the same at all.
This is a sand tiger shark that I photographed in Japan
and you can so those sort of long slender teeth
that the sand tiger has which are very different
than a regular tiger shark.
This is a tiger shark and you can see those
sort of triangular serrated teeth here
that the tiger shark has
which are used for chumping into their prey
which is often things like sea turtles,
sorry for the sea turtle fans in the audience.
But they're very different.
So making these kinds of pictures helped, I think readers
and helped give some dimension to these animals.
And I also wanted to photograph species like the whale shark
which doesn't have teeth at all
or the teeth that it has are very very small.
This is a plankton feeder.
Not a predatory shark but the biggest fish in the ocean.
This is one that I photographed in Mexico
and was sort of entranced
by this living wreath of bait fish
that was encircling its head
as I was free diving alongside of it there
that day in these coastal waters that were very green.
I actually saw my very fist whale shark in western Australia
back in 1995.
Giant animal and I can remember we were using spotter planes
to go out and sort of find them
and then when they found one they would radio to the boat
and tell us where it was
and we'd position ourselves way in front of it
and I would slip into the water and just sort of wait there
snorkeling for this animal that materialized
out of the blue and it was like swimming next to a dinosaur.
That's the closest thing I could imagine.
Just silently emerges and then sort of fades off
into the gloom.
But despite my own personal fascination and love
of sharks I realized that these are animals
that for many people are something to fear,
something that they don't like.
There's still the old adage that the only good shark
is a dead shark and sharks have been portrayed as demons
something that must be killed.
This has certainly been true in modern times off course
with films like Jaws.
Even though Jaws sort of demonized sharks,
I have to say I do love that film, but for other reasons.
But we were sort of demonizing
and villainizing these animals long before Jaws,
the book or the movie came out.
This is a painting that was done by John Singleton Copley
in 1778 that's called Watson and the Shark
and it shows this monster like shark about to eat this woman
that's fallen in the ocean and all these people
are being terrorized and I think for a very long time
sharks have been portrayed as these
sort of shadowy one dimensional monsters
that don't have any depth to them.
They're just out there waiting to eat us
the second we put our toe in the ocean
and the reality off course is that
although they are predators and have the potential
to do harm to humans,
we're definitely not on the menu.
These are actually rather complex animals,
science is only beginning to fully understand them,
but they're very very complex creatures
and they play a vital role in the health of the ocean.
So as I worked on new stories for the magazine,
I wanted to produce images that would allow people
to see sharks in new ways, in new light,
and help change some of these misconceptions that exist.
Whenever possible I wanted to make images
that showed sharks within their environment
because what we've learned over time
is that healthy ecosystems in the ocean depend
on healthy populations of predators,
particularly animals like sharks.
This is an image that I made of a Black Tip Reef Shark
in a place called Millennium Atoll out in the middle
of the central South Pacific.
One of these places that because of its remoteness
has remained largely unspoiled
and it's a very sharky place.
The biomass of predators like sharks is very high there
and there's a direct correlation
between the number of sharks
and the health of the coral reefs.
This is science that Enric Sala and his Pristine Seas team
who I think might be here tonight,
have sort of proven.
And I saw it not only in these places but in other places.
I was on an assignment for the magazine
a number of years ago in New Zealand
doing a story on marine reserves
and I was in Fiordland, this very shadowy,
sort of Lord of the Rings place.
And diving in the temperate water there.
And I was photographing macro life on the wall,
these colorful little tiny animals.
And I looked up and in the distance saw this
Sevengill Shark a very prehistoric looking animal
sort of coming at me
so I swapped my macro rig for a wide angle
that my assistant was holding
and was able to make a single frame.
But again the correlation
is between healthy shark populations
and healthy oceans, it's a direct correlation
and that's what I've learned.
So whenever possible, I wanna make images
that sort of speak to that relationship.
It was the same everywhere I went.
You'd go to places that saw dead coral reefs
in parts of the Caribbean lets say and you just didn't see
many sharks.
Or I went to the Bahamas, places in the Bahamas
where the reefs were pretty healthy
and there were lots of sharks around
so you could see it, it was quite evident.
And in my work as it evolved,
I also wanted, particularly in the stories
for National Geographic, I wanted to try to show readers
a little bit more of the lives of sharks,
a little bit more of the life cycle.
Particularly focusing for a period of time on baby sharks,
on shark pups.
Because at the time I made this photo of a lemon shark pup
in Bimini in the Bahamas, I hadn't really seen
a lot of images of this kind of thing
but it's a very important part of the equation.
Most folks just wanna look at the big scary sharks
with the jaws and the teeth and the blood
and that kind of thing but, this is an important part
of the equation.
Lemon shark pups have their babies in mangrove nurseries
in these very shallow places where trees grow
out of the water.
And it's a place where big predators can't get in.
And the lemon sharks live for the first two to three
years of their lives in these nurseries
where they feed and eventually get big enough
to go out and compete on the reef.
But this was a fairly new born lemon shark pup
that was maybe only 12 inches in length
swimming in about a foot deep of water.
I spent days laying in that mangrove
trying to get the sharks to build up their courage
and come close and after I left this place,
I'd learned that some of these mangroves
had been bulldozed so that a golf course
could be made for a resort.
This is the only shark nursery for a 150 miles around
and it's critical habitat so these are vital.
So having images like this within the context of a story
I think helps people to understand the importance
of protecting places like this.
And whenever possible I also wanted to show behavior
with sharks, it's a little hard to do sometimes
but we're working on a story about the Mesoamerican Reef,
it's the second largest barrier reef in the world.
I was able to photograph Caribbean reef sharks
predating on lion fish.
Now as you may know lion fish are invasive species
in the Atlantic ocean.
They've sort of just exploded
and there haven't really been any great solutions
to eradicating them.
There's some places where divers will go down
and try to spear them and it's had some low level impact
but in Roatan in Honduras there was a shark biologist
that over a couple of years had been trying to train
the local Caribbean reef sharks to acquire a taste
for these, he'd initially spear them and feed em to them
and over time they began to naturally predate on them
and it was controlling the population,
they were beginning to go down
and naturally predate on that.
So that was important too.
But at the end of the day, I mostly really hope that
by showing sharks as something beautiful,
as just beautiful animals, making pictures
that would intrigue the reader
and making them wanna know more
might dispel some of that fear.
Again that shadowy, looking at pictures like Copley,
Copley that just make them look like monsters
isn't gonna help anything.
But if we can show these animals as more beautiful,
maybe not quite dolphins,
but certainly something to marvel at.
And while working on a story about sharks of the Bahamas
a few years for the Magazine.
I spent 18 days in winter time in the Bahamas
trying to get a photo of the elusive great hammer head
that we see here but, because of the rough weather
that we had at that time of year,
I only had two days where I could actually work
and I made this frame on the very last night at sunset
when this big fourteen foot male sort of just swirled in
just below the surface.
But the idea was that my hope is that a photo like this
might engage people or readers in the magazine,
they wanna read the caption and hopefully the story
and learn that hammer head populations in the last 20 years
or so in the Atlantic ocean have declined about 89%.
These are animals that we don't know very much about,
we don't know where they travel to or from necessarily,
we don't know where they mate,
we don't know where they have their pups.
And we're loosing them faster than we can learn about them
so, to be able to make beautiful pictures
or engaging images of sharks I think is a big part of it.
The fact is almost every species of shark
out there in the world is in real trouble,
certainly all the predatory species
and they really do need our help.
So as my career evolved, I wanted to turn my camera
toward some of the darker side
of what was happening to sharks as well
because I felt it was necessary to show people
what was happening to these animals
and the global slaughter
that was occurring around the world.
A lot of sharks are killed for food
but the truth is this is wildlife
and every single year right now on planet earth,
more than a 100 million sharks are being killed.
I mean think about that number.
A 100 million sharks.
We can't kill a 100 million apex predators
and expect any ecosystem to be healthy
and that's certainly the case here so,
as I worked on these kinds of stories,
I sort of got away from trying to make beautiful pictures
and approached it more like war photography.
I wanted to make images that would grab people's attention
so it was dead sharks being cut up on a beach
or a dead Mako shark in a gill net.
And showing another Mako here on the beach being finned.
You know most of those sharks, the 100 million
or whatever the actual number is
maybe more than a 100 million.
Most of those are killed for their fins
for the soup fin business, in the shark fin soup
that's very popular in Asia.
And that's what's happening here,
they fetch a very high price,
so that's the first thing that the fisherman goes for.
And as I was working on this story, I wanted,
it was a story about the global fish crisis,
the problems of overfishing and shark fishing
was a big component of that.
I really wanted an image that would create some empathy
for these animals.
I think this picture might have done it,
but it was actually one morning when I jumped in the water
in the sea of Cortez came along a gill net,
where this Thresher shark had just recently died
and its eye was still open
and because it's a pelagic animal, it had these
great big pectoral fins like we saw
on the blue shark earlier and as I framed it up
in my camera's view finder it sort of struck me
as a crucifixion and I thought that maybe
that would give some empathy to these animals
that really are in trouble and need our help.
It became the lead picture in that cover story in 2007
but it's gone on to have a life beyond that.
Being used by a number of conservation organizations as well
to sort of beat that drum
and help people understand the plight of sharks.
So all of this sort of prelude brings me to
the work that I recently did for National Geographic,
these series of four stories about some of the top
predatory species of sharks.
As Greg mentioned, we ran three of them this summer
in June, July and August
and we have one story yet to be published,
a story on Mako sharks that will be upcoming.
And you know I think my hope was that by doing that
as I mentioned earlier consecutively,
readers would come to see these animals as different,
as to some degree having personality
and as being something that we can, not only respect
but really marvel at.
I don't have any illusions that sharks or fish
which is what they are off course
will ever be held in the same regard
that a fury mammal, I think we have a national affinity
to terrestrial animals, particularly cute animals
that live in the forest but,
I do think that if we can show these animals
as miracles of evolution
then maybe we can get some respect
and if we get the respect then appreciation
and move that dial a little bit in terms of conservation,

Swimming With Sharks: Photographing the Ocean’s Top Predators (Part 1) | Nat Geo Live

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