Underwater Photography Legend Brian Skerry

“…based on my personal experience and having worked with scientists and researchers most of my life, I would say that it's not too late. There are some things that are probably gone. There are places where only pockets of biodiversity may remain in the time ahead, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a healthy future. It may not be what it once was, but it's like the old saying - when's the best day to quit smoking cigarettes? Today - if you don’t quit today, when's the next best day? Tomorrow. 

So, it's not too late. We may have lost 50% of the world's coral reefs, but that means there's 50% left. We may have taken 90% of the big fish in the ocean, but maybe there's 10% left. We don't have to kill 100 million sharks every year. We don't have to rollback legislation that determines how much carbon we pump into the atmosphere. We can speak out against that and tell our elected leaders that we care. The ocean doesn't have to turn acidic because we're dumping so much carbon into it that its chemistry is changing.

These are things that we can change and can control. So, I do remain cautiously optimistic. I realize that the battle lines are drawn and we have to fight hard, but I do think that it's worth fighting for. It's not too late. And we can see a reversal in the places that have been protected. You do see that resilience. The ocean does know how to take care of itself. We just need to leave it alone…”

-Brian Skerry

Since it’s the last week of summer, not officially but for most of us, we are re-sharing this very important and compelling conversation with Brian Skerry.

Brian Skerry is one of the world's greatest and most accomplished underwater and marine wildlife photographers. He’s also one of the most prolific: he’s been a contract photographer for National Geographic since 1998, his work has been featured in scores of publications including Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and BBC Wildlife, and he’s the author of 11 books including the acclaimed monographs Ocean Soul and Shark.

In that time he’s won so many awards that it would take a second email to list them all, but particular highpoints include Brian becoming an 11-time award winner in the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, and when National Geographic magazine named one of his images among their 50 Greatest Photographs Of All Time.

In his four decades exploring the world's oceans, Brian has experienced things that very few humans will ever get to experience, like diving with a population of southern right whales who had never before encountered human beings dropping down into their underwater universe. 

Brian dives eight months of the year, often in extreme conditions - beneath Arctic ice or in shark-infested waters.

His work brings us the beauty and the majesty of our oceans, but it also shows us the devastation and the destruction that we've caused them. His stories raise awareness, promote conservation, and ultimately create change.

Today, June 8th, is World Oceans Day, the day to celebrate the world's combined efforts to protect the one ocean that we all share. And that ocean is in bad shape - between dead zones, loss of apex predators, rising sea levels affecting tidal ecosystems, the bleaching of coral reefs, oil spills polluting the waters and decimating habitats, overfishing and hunting of marine species, climate change, rising acidity levels, and plastic, plastic and more plastic - the ocean’s future seems extremely bleak. But, as I learned from Brian, there’s still time. Our ocean is resilient and there is so much left that we can save, but we have to act now.

And, I can’t imagine a better day to begin than World Oceans Day. So, start by listening to Brian, one of the best tellers of ocean stories out there.