National Geographic Photographer Brian Skerry on Fighting for a Wilder Ocean

Nearly four decades ago, a 15-year-old kid from a blue collar town in Massachusetts first submerged himself underwater in a full diving suit. After going to a diving conference a few months later, that kid decided to become an underwater photographer and bought an old, used underwater camera – a Nikonus II – and began “making pictures which were absolutely horrible. Didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing, but you know, started figuring things out.”

He’s been diving and photographing underwater since, becoming an accidental conservation photographer for National Geographic in the process. "It was not originally my intention to focus on these problems," Skerry said in a recent interview. "I just wanted to take photos of beautiful places. But over time, I saw the problems plaguing the oceans — fewer fishes and sharks, whales and dolphins snarled in nets, coral reefs dying … and I felt a responsibility and urgency as a journalist to give the complete story, realizing that most people don't have the opportunity to see what I am seeing."

Brain Skerry was in Cape Cod taking a short break from photographing great white sharks when we called him.

Laetitia Laubscher: You’ve said that becoming a National Geographic photographer was quite a lofty dream for you. After deciding to become an underwater photographer at such a young age, what steps did you take to make that dream a reality?

Brian Skerry: You know, it was a rather slow process, a slow evolution. I didn’t really have any real guidance or mentorship as to how to get to National Geographic. There were only maybe two or three photographers doing underwater photography at National Geographic, and they all seemed very well-established and weren’t going anywhere. It took many years. I worked on dive charter boats and I continued to take pictures whenever I went underwater. When I started to make a few bucks I went travelling a bit around the world and then make images of things I was seeing in other places. I wrote stories for dive magazines, I did some small assignments for other magazines where there was an underwater component to it – I remember once going on an assignment for one magazine photographing the US skiing team who were training underwater in a swimming pool with a physical therapist who invented some new rubber band they could swim with. But you know, I had other jobs too, because those things weren’t enough to pay the bills.

So I always had that photo business and diving sort of thing on the side and then eventually started to sell a few pictures to National Geographic here and there through a guy I had met, one of the veterans – Bill Curtsinger – who got me my first assignment with them in 1998. But yeah, the good thing about that was that I learned a lot along the way. When I finally got my chance I was somewhat ready. I could do the job. I still learnt a lot after that, but at least in that moment in time, I didn’t fail, because I had some skills from the years of practice.

LL: So would you describe it as quite an organic process for you? Meeting Bill Curtsinger was just part of the journey?

BS: Yeah, absolutely. I had been a long-time admirer of his work, but only met him late in the process and he was winding down, he was beginning to get ready to retire. And so one day he called me after we had become a little friendly, and he said that he had two assignments – one that he wanted to do and one that he didn’t want to do.

And the one he didn’t want to do was a shipwreck story. He had gone to the site a year before and said that there was really nothing there to photograph and that visibility is absolutely horrible. And you know, with National Geographic you’re only going to get one chance, he said, 'so I can recommend you, but you might want to wait for something better to come down the road because if you fail you’re not going to get another shot'. But I was doing a lot of shipwreck diving and shipwreck photography in those days and thought that I probably could do it, so I asked for his recommendation, and that recommendation plus them looking at my portfolio at that time got me the assignment. And everything he had said about the site was true, but I figured out a way to get photographs which they liked, and so they decided to develop me as one of their regular shooters. It was partially a question of being in the right place at the right time, but it could have easily gone south if I didn’t know what I was doing.

LL: You don’t use telephoto lenses because of visibility issues. What lenses do you use?

BS: I use a variety of wide angle lenses. I used to just be a prime lens guy, 14mm, 18mm, 20mm, however maybe two-three years ago I started using zoom lenses, I never used to think they were that good or that sharp, but they’ve improved a lot in recent years. So one of my bread and butter lenses these days is a 17-35mm. So it’s still quite wide, but it’s a good range because if I’m photographing dolphins or something like that one minute they’re in my face and the next minute their 10-15 metres away, I can rack it in and out and try to get the pictures regardless of how close they are – but still within reason, you know.

LL: Yeah, I mean you are still getting really close to those animals in order to photograph them. What’s been the most magical encounter you’ve had underwater?

BS: Well, I’ve had many extraordinary encounters, truly, a string of them throughout my career. But, right at the top would have to be an experience I had in New Zealand with the southern right whales. It’s really hard to top that. For me it was a trip that was very speculative, I was working with some researchers that I brought with me on this trip to do this story and some of them had been to the Auckland Islands in the subantarctic before, but they weren’t divers so hadn’t been in the water. They told me no one had really photographed these whales before, they were discovered maybe ten years before I was there, but only researchers had been down there, so I didn’t know what I would find – whether the animals would let me close, whether the water would be clear. But from the moment I arrived the animals were very, very curious about me – and these very giant 45-foot, 70-tonne whales that were coming right up and checking me out. And I’d be down at the bottom maybe 70 feet and I’d be sitting on the sandy floor on my knees and they’d just come over. And I would be bending over backwards with my scuba tank in the sand in some yoga pose while this animal’s checking me out. And it could’ve crushed me, easily, but they’re very aware and very gentle. And so that’s pretty hard to beat something like that.

LL: In a couple of talks, you’ve celebrated New Zealand’s marine policies and reserves, especially the Goat Island marine reserve in Leigh. Yet New Zealand has the fourth largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world and only has about 0.4% of that area converted into reserves. In the past, we made a commitment to turn 10% of our EEZ into marine reserves by 2010, which didn’t end up  happening. Do you think there should be more pressure on governments like New Zealand which have such large chunks of marine territory to create more marine reserves?

BS: Well, you know, as you pointed out, I do and have for several years now held up New Zealand as a great model for success when it comes to marine reserves and ocean conservation. I cherish the experiences I’ve had there and I really love the stories of success – Goat Island being a perfect one I recount time and time again because it is so powerful. And when I was there and doing these stories in 2006, and I remember the goal of 10% by 2010 and obviously that didn’t happen, but I still think New Zealand should be applauded for all the great things the country has done in terms of marine conservation. But I believe, as you’ve pointed out, there’s more room for those accolades and to continue to take a leadership role as a country with one of the biggest EEZ. That is a mantle of responsibility and I certainly look to New Zealand as a country that can lead the way. But you know, like anywhere in the world, political decisions can only be made if there’s a will of the people. If politicians put their finger up in the air and sense the way the wind is blowing, they’ll probably act accordingly. If there are enough people in New Zealand who want these things, I’d like to believe that it would happen.

LL: That’s an interesting point. Because about 30% of New Zealand land is terrestrial reserve, and there are so many of land reserves around the world, but yet globally less than one tenth of 1% of the ocean is designated marine reserve. Why do you think there’s such a difference between the two, why are marine reserves so much rarer?

BS: Well, my initial reaction would be because we are terrestrial creatures and even though we love the water we don’t spend nearly as much time in it as we do on land, and only a tiny fraction of the population is exploring underwater. One of the things I try to remind people is that you know, if you look at our planet Earth and you look at it from space you see all this water. And it’s often been said that three quarters of the Earth’s surface is water, and that’s true, but 98% of the biosphere – where life can exist – is in the ocean, and only about 1% is protected. And if you consider that every other breath a human takes comes from the sea, you know if for no other reason than our own self interest, we need to protect the ocean. Even if it’s just marine-managed areas which aren’t necessarily in a lock box – I mean I would love to see no-take reserves everywhere, but that might not be realistic.

You know, Dr Bill Ballantine was telling me when I was in New Zealand, that if you gathered a reasonable group of people anywhere in the world into a room and said we want to protect 30-40% of the ocean [for the above reasons], they would say, that sounds fair you still have 60-70% that’s not protected, which is okay for fishing or whatever. But currently only 1% is being protected, and that’s a sin, I believe. But I think it’s because it’s not on people’s radars, but if you tell them, I think yeah, they would agree that we need to do this.

Postscript: On the 29th of September 2015, the New Zealand government announced at the United Nations General Assembly in New York that it will be creating a no-take, fully protected marine reserve in the Kermadec region spanning 620,000 km2. The sanctuary will cover 15% of the New Zealand EEZ.

LL: You’ve talked about observing the effects of global warming in your work – mentioning how newborn harp seal pups in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence would need 12 days on a stable platform before they can be weaned, but because of the thinning of the ice are falling into the water much sooner than that and dying. Where else have you seen the effects of global warming?

BS: I’ve done three stories about some of the world’s most remote and pristine coral reefs – out in the Central South Pacific so the Southern Line Islands, a place called Kingman Reef and the Phoenix Islands. In early 2009, I had just been an expedition in the Southern Line Islands, which was spectacular. Later that year I went to the Phoenix Islands, which are also spectacular, usually, but when we got there we discovered that a great deal of the coral was dead and had been bleached. Scientists had put down temperature loggers in the reefs earlier on, and after analysing the data they found that the area had suffered the worst thermal heating occurrence ever on record. I think that the belief is that this is because of climate change and that these events will become perhaps more frequent and more severe.

The only good news was that the Phoenix Islands had become protected by the Kiribati government, so many of the other pieces were in place to offer some resilience – there were still predators, herbivores, and we saw that – we saw some of the coral beginning to grow again. It’s hard to talk in long-term equations of what did happen or will happen, but to me, it’s very evident when you go to a place like that and you see all the dead coral in the ocean, that it is likely because of climate change – and most of the researchers that I worked with agreed that it was indeed the cause.

I also did a story on leatherback turtles – one of the most endangered species of sea turtle in the world, and there’s a lot of reasons for why they’re endangered – they get caught in fishing gear and so on, but also one of the things is that their eggs – when a female lays eggs the sex of the turtle that hatches is determined by temperature, and I don’t remember the exact details, but if it’s too hot or too cold they’re all either males or females. I’m told that that’s one of the problems, temperatures are leading to too many of the same sex so you’re not getting enough breeding partners. So these sea turtles are getting selected out by climate change.

I did a dolphin story with spotted dolphins and so I had to work with a researcher in the Bahamas who had been working there for 30 years. And when I went down there a couple of years ago to work with her, she couldn’t find her dolphins for the first time in her career. They had moved a great distance and it took her weeks to find them again. I asked her why she thought they moved and she said, well, maybe it’s the food and what they’re eating so maybe climate was having something to do with the water temperatures and the kind of food, that perhaps the things that they eat had moved.

And then of course there’s acidification, sea level rise – you know, Kiribati, they’ve already got water lapping into their churches on their main island of Tarawa. So, this stuff is real, we’re seeing it. I was in Antarctica talking with people who man some of the US Antarctic bases down there and they were showing me a glacier behind this one research building and they said it wasn’t that long ago that this glacier was much closer, and they showed me how far it had retreated in a relatively short amount of time – and that’s stuff I don’t believe we’re supposed to be witnessing.

LL: Climate change is such a strange issue because you have 97% of climate scientists agreeing that human-caused climate change is happening, and yet there’s this odd political element to it. That your political alignment determines whether you agree with the facts or not.

BS: Yeah, I mean, I… it totally stupefies me. I can’t even imagine how somebody could deny what 97% of climate scientists are saying. I mean look at the data, since the industrial revolution, temperature has spiked, and we’re seeing the consequences. For anybody to say that, well, I don’t think it’s caused by us or that it’s happening, I think that’s ludicrous, I just don’t understand it. So yeah, it is political, but my hope is that there’s enough people who do get it so that changes are made. In this country there’s been ongoing debate about this, but the president recently came out in a trip to Alaska and spoke strongly about climate change and how we need to do something about it, that it’s one of the great issues of our time, if maybe not the greatest, I don’t know. But yeah, we have to first acknowledge it, and then do something about it.

LL: What keeps you optimistic?

BS: I remain optimistic about the human spirit. There will always be people who disagree and don’t believe the facts. But my belief in general is that people when presented with good evidence will choose to do the right thing. Not everybody, but the majority I believe will act properly and want to do the right thing. And this is why we do what we do as journalists, we want to get that information out there, we want to offer irrefutable evidence. I mean, as a journalist I have to remain somewhat impartial, but it’s hard when you’re making pictures of things that are quite obvious – there is no other side to the story in some cases. I mean, this is it, this is what’s happening. So I would hope that collectively, around the world people and governments recognise these things and begin to do the right thing. And I do think that they are – I am seeing traction on these issues. Since doing my 2006 piece on the Goat Island marine reserve I’ve seen many countries doing a sort of arms race on MPAs [marine protected areas].

LL: What do you think the value of storytelling is in conservation work?

BS: I think, the value of storytelling in conservation is tremendous. I believe that, you know, most photographers, well I guess I can only speak for myself – I began just wanting to make pretty pictures. Just beautiful pictures of animals and places that really appealed to me and interested me, but the reason that I have pursued some of these stories about conservation is because I felt the need – I’ve seen these problems occurring – and I think, as human beings most people lead very busy lives, we don’t have the time necessarily to really do as many things as we would like to – you know, investigate things on our own, which is the reason we read newspapers for news or we watch television and try to become aware through news programmes. And I think conservation is the same thing, to the degree that a photojournalist like myself can go to places that are off the radar for a lot of folks, you know, swimming under water and documenting what I see, I think is very important. Because only through awareness and education are we going to make informed decisions about what we’re going to do. The choices of things we’re going to eat, buy or how we’re going to behave. And you know, our planet depends on it. There are a lot of people on this planet right now and we could probably do things a lot better. So the more we know about the damage that’s being caused or how things are being done, how fish are caught or harvested, or vegetables are grown, the better. I think conservation is important and I think a good journalist can move the dial towards good if they do their job correctly.

LL: It’s also about balance, right? Because you do want to give people something beautiful to look at, something positive that would inspire them to protect nature, as well as conveying that more serious conservation message.

BS: Absolutely. You know, although a lot of my stories sort of have an environmental theme or some kind of conservation message perhaps, I really do just want to do just happy stories, because I think it’s really important to do celebratory stories. Stories that just show the magnificence of what’s in the ocean, and in nature in general, and we have to know that there are beautiful things that are worthy of protecting, and we have to know that it’s not too late. If there’s no hope then what’s the point? So I’m always looking for, not only beautiful things – that’s easy, but for messages of hope.

Brian Skerry will be giving his talk 'Ocean Wild' at Aotea Centre in Auckland on Wednesday October 21 at 7:30pm and at Te Papa Museum in Wellington on Thursday October 22 at 7:30pm as part of the National Geographic Live speaker series. Get tickets here.