Stepping Beyond the Water’s Edge with Adventurer and Artist Joshua Lambus By Sara Stover
KeOlaMagazine.com | January - February 2022
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oshua Lambus is literally paddling through a sea of foam noodles. Clinging to these bright green, blue, and pink cylinders are visitors of all ages, many of whom have never been snorkeling before today. As he scans Kealakekua Bay, Joshua is delighted to see that the very snorkelers who were terrified to leave the beach earlier that morning are now bobbing along, smiling. The sight calls to mind the first time he ventured beyond the water’s edge himself and discovered a new world below the surface. “That first moment I dipped my face in the water, I realized there was a whole world to explore that I barely knew existed. It changed the direction of my life and led to some insane experiences,” Joshua recalls. “I want other people to experience these things. It’s why I became a dive master and adventure guide!” Originally from Houston, Joshua first visited Hawai‘i Island when he was only 17 years old. It was on that trip that his uncle, a Hawai‘i resident and adventure-seeker, first introduced Joshua to the ocean and taught him to surf. “I was hooked!” he admits, so after graduating from high school in 2003, Joshua moved to Kona and has called Hawai‘i home ever since. He began his life on the island as a chef at the original Splashers Grill. From the kitchen’s window, Joshua would gaze out at the ocean and watch dolphins playing in the waves. Unable to resist the pull to life offshore, he started scuba diving for fun. Unsatisfied with simply trying something out, Joshua is intent on immersing himself so deeply into a subject that he can teach it. It’s this passion for sharing his knowledge that led Joshua to become a divemaster at Big Island Divers, with an emphasis on daily blackwater dives. Blackwater diving is a night scuba experience that takes divers miles offshore, where they essentially hang suspended from a tether, over thousands of feet of dark water, just for the chance to spot pelagic (open ocean) animals floating by. Joshua’s years of experience in Hawai‘i’s waters, caves, and canyons ultimately led him to seek a deeper connection with life’s great unknowns, and capture it all with his camera. Although his commitment to photography began with 35mm
and medium format film, Joshua was soon diving deeper into the ocean and into the world of digital photography. The Art of Capturing Blackwater on Camera “In the 1970s, Chris Newbert was shooting photos while doing blackwater dives, but with film. When I got into blackwater diving two to three times a week and photographing plankton at night, I was shooting with a digital SLR camera, which enabled me to be more prolific, capturing a lot more images of these animals,” Joshua affirms. As his images of glowing jellyfish, transparent plankton, and other gelatinous creatures that resemble beings from another universe began to make the rounds, they garnered popularity. It’s not just what Joshua photographs—it’s how he captures these images—that has attracted the likes of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural
