Zitat des Tages von Brian Skerry:
The bohar snapper - they have these huge canines. I got bit by one. One took a chunk out of my ear - they are much scarier than the sharks.
All in all, the dives I made in Fiordland were some of the best I've ever made.
I love storytelling, I love being a visual person, and it just made perfect sense to be an underwater photographer and explore the ocean and work with scientists.
Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator-prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines.
For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.
I swam with my first shark in the 1980s. I was 20 miles off the coast of Rhode Island, working with a group of marine scientists. Late in the day, a 5-foot long blue shark swam into our chum slick. For the next hour, I marveled at the animal's stunning indigo color and the elegant way she moved effortlessly through the sea.
Kneeling on the sea bottom in a place known as Tiger Beach, I watched a 12-foot- long female tiger shark cruise over the turtle grass with three silver bar jacks swimming in front of her nose.
New England waters are some of my favorite - they are some of the richest waters because they are temperate waters and nutrient-rich, and therefore provide food for so many animals, from giant whales to sharks to everything else.
The Oceanic White Tip is considered one of the most dangerous sharks in the sea along with the Great White and Tiger. It is responsible for some of the most famous episodes of man-eating in history, such as when the U.S.S. Indianapolis sank in 1945.
I typically shoot underwater with my regular camera in an underwater housing, and then I usually have two big strobes that I use to light. But with whales, you're not going to be able to really light a 45-foot subject. Your strobes are only effective for maybe five or six feet underwater.
For where Kingman is located, the coral cover is unique in the world. I refer to it as a universe of hard corals. You are not going to find soft corals like in the western Pacific - places like Indonesia, Palau, or Fiji.
I have photographed sharks in waters around the globe, and I always want more and yearn to peer deeper into their world. To feed my passion and to raise awareness, I developed a story about sharks for 'National Geographic' magazine.
Photography can be a powerful instrument for change, and photojournalists can tell stories that make a difference.
I finally became a scuba diver at age 15 or so, and a couple of years after that, I attended a dive show that is held every year in Boston. It's the oldest one in the world and it's still going on - it's called the Sea Rovers.
