( applause )
As a kid I used to dream about the oceans.
It was this wild place full of color and life.
Home to these alien-looking fantastical creatures.
I pictured massive sharks ruling the food chain
and graceful sea turtles dancing across coral reefs.
As a marine biologist turned photographer,
I've spent most of my career looking for places
as magical as those I used to dream about when I was little.
And it's this journey that
I wish to share with you all this evening.
( audience laughter )
So, one of the most common
questions I receive from people is,
"What is the most terrifying moment of your career?"
Now, being in my shoes at this moment
must be really, really, really scary.
And, you know, I'll be honest, I am scared.
I'm scared of over-exposing
-I'm scared of under-exposing -( audience laughter )
I'm scared of getting the sharks out of focus
and I'm scared that my editors are
not going to like a single picture that I'm taking.
The sharks...
they are probably the least of my concern right now.
And, you know, remember these are pretty small sharks
six foot at the most.
So, if sharks are not the scariest part of my job,
well, what is?
There's one creature that if it congregates
in large enough numbers, it scares the crap out of me.
And this is what these creatures look like.
( audience roaring with laughter )
The scariest moments of my photographic career
are without a camera, on a stage
looking over an ocean of people.
You know, give me a white shark
or a
( audience laughter )
But I'm getting ahead of myself here, way ahead of myself.
And like with any good story, I think we have to begin
right at the beginning.
Now I began exploring bodies of water at a fairly young age.
-( audience laughter )
They were a lot smaller than the ones I explore now
but at that stage, I thought, you know
they were probably as exciting as
the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean are for me today.
Let's fast forward.
Today my photography is largely anchored in conservation.
And, you know, with conservation photography
you have two approaches.
I call it "the carrot and the stick" approach.
On the one hand, you can showcase them
the most amazing places on this planet and make them go, "Wow!"
I could not believe a place like
St. Joseph Atoll could exist.
And hopefully they make a connection with it.
So, for half the year,
I have this incredible privilege to document
some of the most amazing marine realms on our planet.
However as a photojournalist,
I need to document the reality
of our relationship with the oceans.
So, for the other half of the year, I document, what I
sort of call the darker side
of our relationship with the sea.
Whether it's over-fishing
the impacts of climate change or oil-spills.
But I always feel like I walk a very fine line
between inspiring and disturbing.
When young photographers always ask me,
"What is, sort of, number one tip you can give me?"
I always say, "Begin in your backyard."
Begin with a subject and a place that
you are intimately familiar with
and a place that you can go back to again and again and again.
In South Africa, I had a pretty sexy backyard.
I mean, I was lucky.
And my first, sort of, real reportage story was about
great white sharks.
You know, 12 years ago, I mean, when I shot this
this was the, sort of, standard white shark image.
You know, focus on the teeth, aggressive, dangerous, wild and
these sort of pictures are easy to take.
However, the more time I spent out at sea with them
the less I felt that that picture was accurate.
Instead of the aggressive, you know, dangerous white shark,
I was seeing an inquisitive, and very often, curious creature.
The image that follows is the one picture
that I think best represents the white shark to me.
And this was taken on one of those wonderful winter days
the water was clear, the sea was calm and you know
this white shark came across this little box-jellyfish.
And, I thought it would either
swim through it or just ignore it
and for a few seconds this white shark actually almost hovered.
As if it was transfixed by the light on the tentacle
and it just kinda, you know, hovered there
and just looked, as if going
"Hello, what are you?"
And, you know, after she had satisfied her curiosity
that's a three and half year female by the way
she just kind of, you know, turned back
and went back into the depths.
And that is, sort of, how I know great whites,
not with the images before.
My next reportage was also in Southern Africa again.
But the focus here is on sardines.
Now, sardines are a cold water fish
and they prefer the west and south coast
where the water is colder.
However, once a year something unusual happens.
We have this warm current on the east coast
called the Agulhas current.
And, once a year it kind of moves offshore.
And these sardines migrate with this cold water northwards.
And we call this the "sardine run".
And, you know, sardines, heavily over-fished over the years
and this is a species that
really needs the conservation attention but
everyone thinks it lives in tin cans.
It's not just the fishing fleets that follow these sardines.
There's a whole suite of predators
that follows them as well.
Common dolphins, they carve
smaller pieces of sardines off the massive shoals
and they pin and herd them up to the surface.
And, you know, there they form
the holy grail for all photographers.
The bait ball.
I've done the run for eight years. I've seen three.
So, the dolphins herd the sardines
and they take turns, you know, one after the other
they'll rush in grab a sardine and swim out
and take turns like that
amazing cooperative behavior there.
But for me, sardine run
it's all about sharks.
Now, when there's no dolphins,
these sharks have a really hard time.
They get sardine donuts, as we call them.
Mouths full of water most of the time.
When the dolphins are there
the sardines tend to be herded together much more closely.
Working with sharks on the run
is a little bit spicy at times.
Especially, at the end when there's very few sardines left
they treat you like another shark.
So, you get bumped and hit probably every ten-seconds.
And if you want to get good pictures
you just have to ignore the sharks knocking into you.
Most of the time I know I'm not on the menu.
These sharks feed on small sardines.
But I had two encounters,
one, I had a large dusky shark rip-off my fin
and swim away with it. What's that all about?
Why does that shark need another fin, I...
( audience laughter )
I have no idea.
And then another one, I had two bronze whaler sharks
each hanging on to my underwater strobes
and I felt like a Ukrainian weight-lifter.
-( audience laughter ) -I was trying to punch...
They obviously like, when the strobe recycles
there seems to be an electro-current that kind of
you know, gets pushed out, so they
they love biting on those things.
This is my favorite sardine run photograph.
For two reasons. One, it was in clear water
and you know, it looks like the shark is inhaling the sardines.
And right after this, he basically
swings around and comes at me.
You can see these little sardine heads and tails sticking out
it's like an over-stuffed suitcase
with the clothes hanging out.
That's what that reminded me of, it's just one of those
you know, interesting visual scenes there.
But, yeah, you know, that's one of those images
you know, once every eight years, if you're lucky.
At the end of the, you know, bait ball
when there's few sardines left, where do they wanna go?
In between your legs, under your arms, around your head.
The sardines are seeking shelter around you.
( audience laughter )
Which is a really, really bad place to be
not just because of the sharks.
And there's actually a bigger danger on the run.
I'm photographing and I'm looking at screen at something
and as I look up, all the predators are gone.
You know, it's just me and the sardines
and we're looking at each other going,
"What just happened?"
You know, they're too stunned to actually swim away
'cause they don't know what's going on.
That just doesn't happen.
Instinct kicks in and I go, "I'm going where they've gone."
I am back-paddling, I'm swimming out of the bait ball and...
this guy comes rocketing out of nowhere.
-( audience gasping )
He comes up and he pretty much
in front of me, swallows the entire bait ball.
-( audience laughter )
I'm probably a foot or two away
and as he does that he arches upwards
and then he pretty much just leaves the water.
I mean, they have all this energy
and he leaps out of the water
two-thirds come up and I am, more or less
right at the left where the sardine is leaping out.
And...
I'm going, "Oh, crap..."
So, I curl into this little ball
and I'm waiting for the sound of hearing my own bones break.
But I've been trained well.
-I'm still shooting. -( audience laughter )
And the next picture I have no recollection.
I have no memory, but I have this.
( audience gasping )
So, this is all the water streaming
out of the Bryde's whale's mouth.
And, I don't remember this.
Somebody else could have taken this.
It was in my camera at the end of the day.
It's very hard to see, you know, in stills.
So this is sort of, some video of a colleague of mine.
You get the idea of the whole...
how quick and how crazy that bait ball actually is.
Imagine trying to get still pictures in that.
And you have to be where those sharks are.
You have to be one of those sharks, to get the pictures.
So, it gets a bit crazy at times but...
And this is where the birds are just, you know
-using their wings and...
Couple of sharks.
( music )
And here comes the Bryde's whale.
( music )
So, now you get an idea, sort of,
what your environment is like.
And you sort of just have to...
have to just, you know
forget about all that stuff and just focus on the task at hand
which is getting great images.