Transcriber: Nguyễn Huỳnh Đăng Khoa Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
I think that talent is a bit overrated.
And I truly believe that you can achieve a lot more
through hard work, determination and a twist of luck.
You don’t have to be the best.
This is Jacques Cousteau,
a pioneer in oceanic exploration, and an icon for my generation.
While I’ve never met Jacques Cousteau yet,
he’s had a major influence as to why I get to stand here before you today.
Because I wasn’t always an adventurer and documentary photographer.
I was this corporate dude.
(Laughter)
And at the age of 35, I decided to give up this successful corporate career
to documenting the ocean and expeditions for a living.
But contrary to what most people think, radical changes do not happen overnight.
They’re usually the result of small, incremental steps
that are invisible to the outside world.
But this is not just about finding your passion.
Finding your passion is good.
But giving it a purposeful meaning is everything.
Now, if you haven’t picked it up already, I was born in France.
And I can promise you that even on your tippy toe
on the top of the Eiffel Tower, you cannot see the ocean.
And as a kid growing up near Paris,
I was not allowed to watch much TV except when Jacques Cousteau was on.
(Laughter)
And that was my only real exposure to the ocean.
But that was enough.
I was drawn to the water, and it soon became my favorite playground.
Fast-forward 20 years,
my wife Laura and I migrated to Australia,
and because we love solitude so much, we decided to make Bondi our home.
(Laughter)
Bondi had everything I loved.
It had the rocks, the landscape, the surf, the people.
That’s when I picked up a camera.
Because I had great subjects to shoot
as an amateur photographer.
And soon after that, I met Brad Malyon.
He had started the Frothers Gallery, a gallery specializing in ocean imagery.
He offered me to become a contributor to the gallery.
So my mission was to wake up most days of the week before dawn
and shoot the landscape, the surf, the people,
pick the best images, send them out in a newsletter.
And then I would dash to work in the city.
This was the first step in my evolution.
I had to step up my game.
Because I’ve got to be honest.
Initially, my photos were average at best.
But, it made me learn faster.
Henri Cartier-Bresson said,
“Your first 10,000 photographs are the worst.”
So shooting on a daily basis made me a better photographer quicker.
And soon my images became a bit better and more consistent.
It taught me how to be comfortable and agile
with any kind of available light.
My sense of composition had to become fast and intuitive.
Because I could never stage any of the things that I was shooting.
Something that would help me a lot later when shooting documentaries.
But then, one day, Brad told me he was going to shut down the gallery.
So I bought it off him.
Now, this was a lot of work because, remember,
I still wear a suit and tie every day, and I travel a lot for work.
So essentially, all my free time is dedicated to my photography.
I take a few weeks off to go and shoot the surf in Fiji.
I took a day off and I shoot a commercial job.
I shoot weddings on the weekends or family portraits.
I said yes to everything, which was probably a mistake.
But it made me learn faster.
The thing also as well
is that this passion was gradually turning into a paying job.
But something was still lacking for me.
And this is when Jacques Cousteau comes back in a conversation
that would take me in a completely new trajectory.
I wanted to redo the gallery's website,
and so I was referred to a web developer called Axelle.
And one of the first question he asked me when we met was,
“What would be your ultimate assignment as a photographer?”
So that made me think.
And I was like,
“You know what? I was fascinated as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau.
So doing something like this would be amazing.”
He said, “I know this couple, Emmanuelle and Ghislain.
They’re underwater explorers
and they’re currently in the north part of Greenland
doing underwater and under-ice exploration for science.
They’re called Under The Pole.
If you want, I can put you in touch.”
Now, I want to find out who they were.
And what I saw absolutely blew my mind.
Plus, they were doing it with their two-year-old.
So I sent one email, two emails, three, four.
And then one day I got a reply saying,
“Hey, thanks for reaching out.
We might need another photographer during our wintering month.
Let’s Skype!”
So I skyped with Ghislain here on the right.
Everything is going great.
The gig is mine, that’s amazing.
But at the end of the call, I said to him,
“I just want to make sure I’m going to be able to dive and shoot under the ice.”
He said, “Sure, what’s your diving level?”
And I said, “Open water?”
(Laughter)
So for those who don’t know, open water is like level zero of diving.
So just like you, he laughed and he said, “No, you’re not diving here with us.”
I said, “Look, I’ve got six months
between now and the time I get to join you on the boat.
I’m going to do everything I can to be ready.
And then you decide whether I’m fit to dive or not.”
And he said, “OK, fair enough.”
So for six months, all my time and money were dedicated
to learning how to dive with absolutely no guarantee this would pay off.
But more importantly, to go on that assignment,
I had to quit my job.
So I jumped with both feet into the unknown.
And then grabbed this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with both hands.
And now I’m in this Jacques Cousteau documentary,
just like when I was a kid, you know?
But everything is new to me and I really need to learn the ropes.
But soon enough, a test dive is organized to see how I can handle the conditions.
And I get the thumbs up.
I can dive and shoot under the ice.
The water here is -1.7°C.
My feet are frozen.
I can barely feel the knobs and the triggers of my camera.
But I take it all in.
And after all, it’s like a hot bath when you think about it.
Because on the other side of the ice it’s about -25°C.
And there’s no hot shower involved after a dive like that either.
Now if this sounds like your worst nightmare,
for me, in the first time in my career,
actually, I felt I was exactly where I belong.
And look at the reward.
This was our 60-foot schooner caught in the sea ice
for the wintering month under the northern lights.
This first expedition with Under The Pole made me discover something.
I realized what I was lacking in my quest for beautiful images.
A powerful and meaningful story to go with them.
Working with Under the Pole
gave me access to other powerful stories like Emma Camp here,
a marine biologist hovering above dead corals on the Great Barrier Reef,
but who is doing something about it -
growing nurseries, replanting corals and working on their overall resilience.
Or social entrepreneur and conservationist Kerstin Forsberg,
who is doing an amazing job in Peru, trying to protect the manta rays,
convincing the authorities, but also the local fishermen
that those animals are worth a lot more alive than dead.
Eighteen months after returning from Greenland,
I got another call from Under The Pole,
offering me to become their official photographer
for their next expedition.
The plan was to go on a four-year journey around the world
from the Arctic to the Antarctic across the Pacific
to study the twilight zone, or mesophotic area.
The twilight zone is between 30 and 150 meters depth.
It is widely unknown because it’s too deep for conventional divers,
but it’s too shallow when you’ve got the means to use submersibles.
So what I thought was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
was becoming a lifestyle.
We started off by sailing the Northwest Passage from Greenland
all the way around to Alaska, which comes with a few challenges.
And diving to look for biofluorescence and bioluminescence,
as well as trying to do an inventory of the underwater Arctic biodiversity.
Then we arrived in French Polynesia
for an ambitious 12-month program called Deep Hope,
focusing on the mesophotic corals, or deep corals,
and trying to paint a new picture of the reef
from the surface down to 120 meters and even deeper.
Among the scientists with us,
we had on board Michel Pichon, 81, from University of Tropical Queensland.
And guess with whom Michel Pichon collaborated in early days of his career,
(Laughter)
from the ’60s to the ’80s ...
Jacques Cousteau.
Ghislain and his team during this mission
found the deepest mesophotic coral ever recorded and sampled,
172 meters below the surface.
Which was certainly a highlight for Michel,
who was the bridge between two generations of oceanic explorers.
This is what the twilight zone looks like, 80 meters below the surface.
When I took that shot, I actually can’t believe I’m here.
A few years ago, I was only allowed to 18 meters,
with pretty much someone holding my hand.
And I’d never really take an underwater photo other than with a GoPro.
And then there was the ice.
And then it was learning how to dive longer and then deeper.
The biggest learning for me in all of this:
Being brave is not about diving deep or crossing rough oceans.
Not being scared to be a beginner over and over again
is what I would define as being brave.
For the last six years,
I've had to learn how to be comfortable being constantly out of my comfort zone.
So my advice to someone who wants to make a change is:
Be ready to suck at everything again.
(Laughter)
And don’t let your ego get in the way.
(Applause)
Now, when I took that shot in the outer reef of Bora Bora -
this is one of those days - everything was perfect.
For the first time in a long, long time,
I was finally starting to feel confident.
But then something happened, which you will see next.
I’m just outside of the frame on the footage
that you will see in a minute.
I was about to press the trigger.
And then I froze.
(Music)
[At that point I’m thinking
wow, this is great, this is really incredible.
It’s really quite rare
to find yourself in such a setting
with these creatures so close.
At a depth of 80 meters
in this magnificent blue.
I witnessed an almost unthinkable scene.]
(Loud static sound)
(Heartbeats)
(Animal vocalizations)
(Metallic noise)
[I don’t know exactly what happened.
I dropped my camera.]
(Discordant sounds)
(Background of heartbeat)
[I saw Julien. He’d lost his mask.
I didn’t know the extent of the damage.
I just knew it had bitten me.
And I thought OK, I have to act quickly.
He’d bitten through my strap,
so I’ve got no mask
I can feel water going straight into my loop.
It’s much harder to breathe.
I put myself in front of his face
and give a big OK sign.]
(Vocalizations)
[We were facing an extremely grave situation.
since it looked as though he’d lost his rebreather.
I absolutely had to stay calm.
If I panicked at that point
at that depth, it’s simple,
you end up drowning.
It’s over. End of story.
We had over two hours of decompression to make before reaching the surface again.
Now, I want to give a bit of context behind what you've just seen.
This is a grey reef shark whose territorial behavior, displayed,
leading into this sequence, was a little bit unusual,
and therefore not picked up as such by the divers.
So his bite was nothing more than a message to tell us to go away
as we had not read the previous warning.
It was not a big shark,
but the consequences at that depth could have been disastrous.
Now, I want to reassure you, he’s fine.
Got quite a few stitches, but he’s fine.
But this happened to one of the very best of us,
super trained, super qualified, cold-headed.
He was actually good to go after a couple of weeks.
I wasn’t.
(Laughter)
This incident took place four weeks before me flying home
to welcome our baby girl into the world after years of unsuccessful attempts
and a series of disappointment.
This made me unsure of everything.
I didn’t want to dive.
What if that would happen to me?
Is it all worth it?
Do I want to die for the corals?
But with the help of the team and their support I pulled through.
Came back home to Australia, safely,
became the proud father of our little Poppy.
And six months after that, we were onto our next mission:
the Capsule.
The idea of the Capsule was to monitor the reef,
continuously, several days at a time,
and diving with no time limit, which actually meant living underwater.
Now, if that sounds crazy to you, and did seem crazy to me as well,
a little bit.
But it was also the best way for me to get back on the horse.
And we lived on another planet for four days.
We lived something that’s very hard to describe,
and the minute I left the surface, I was back into the right frame of mind.
Doubts had vanished.
We had all trained for that, so I knew I could do it.
And it ended up being one of the most incredible experiences of all time,
for me and for all of us.
Diving, doing science protocols
and then coming back into the capsule to make more observations.
But I’ll give you that it’s not for everyone.
(Laughter)
Three of us in four cubic meters to do everything.
Work, sleep, rest, eat, wash.
You know, you’ve got to love your teammates very, very much.
But I must say, as a young dad, one of the great things
about living in the belly of the ocean
is that you cannot hear your baby screaming at night.
Instead, I was able to say hi via the video monitoring system.
Our continuous presence, day and night,
made the environment oblivious to our presence.
The fish got used to us.
And we actually got to know some of them “personally” and their behavior.
We left the surface on Tuesday morning and came back on Friday afternoon.
We were not far.
We were on the outer reef of Moorea.
And yet, it felt like a trip into space.
Ghislain, Emmanuelle and their team
had built this incredibly functional tool to observe the ocean from within,
bypassing some of the human physiological constraints.
And I had captured their story.
After this mission, I realized that my daughter was the subject of my struggle -
the “What if something happens to me?” syndrome - could also be my driving force.
Of course, I could play it safe and stop it all.
But her generation is coming into a world
with many more challenges than when I was born.
So when in doubt, I try to remind myself why I do what I do.
I do it to tell the stories of the people
who are trying to make a difference in this challenging environment.
People who dream big for the greater good, the silent heroes.
I was only a kid, but Jacques Cousteau,
his images left a timeless imprint in my brain.
So I know first-hand the power
that images can have on a young mind to educate and inspire.
So all I wish now is that my images
leave a trace and maybe, maybe
sparkle a dream or two.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)