Oceanographic Magazine / Issue Seventeen

ISSUE

17

Conservation • Exploration • Adventure

WOLF M OT H E R LIFE BY THE SEA WITH A RAIN WOLF AND HER CUBS

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©Photograph: Laurent Ballesta/Gombessa Project

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Editor’s Letter H e re i s a p l a c e , beautiful and balanced and l a r g e l y d ev o i d o f h u m a n a c t i v i t y, t h a t s t i l l m o ve s to the rhythm of w a ve s a n d w i n d , and to the call of h o w l i n g w o l ve s .

Steve Woods' account of spending time with a pack of sea wolves on a remote beach in British Columbia is a vivid and beautiful story.

Reading it, I could taste the salt in the air as Pacific Ocean waves tumbled and crashed along the weather-beaten shoreline. I could hear the rustle of leaves and the bending of wood as winds moved through the ancient forests that stand so tall and strong at the shore’s edge. Most remarkable of all, I could feel my spine tingle as the wolf pack howled to the sea and forests around them, just as their distant ancestors would have done long before them, alerting all other creatures in the area to their presence, and perhaps giving thanks for the food and shelter the sea and land continue to provide them.

Peering into true wilderness like this, as Steve’s photography and storytelling allow us to do, is humbling. Stories like this are reminders that, while we may be the dominant species on Earth, this planet is most certainly not ours, as I think many are inclined to believe. Here is a place, beautiful and balanced and largely devoid of human activity, that still moves to the rhythm of waves and wind, and to the call of howling wolves, as it has done for millennia.

That is not to say that humans have not encroached on the area at all – of course we have. But where some seek to invade, others ready themselves to defend, and there has been a welcome conservation win in the area very recently, as Steve’s story reveals.

Will Harrison Editor

I hope you too are moved by this story of wilderness and wolves, and feel joy at the fact that the beaches on which these marvellous creatures roam will, for now at least, continue to be dominated by pawprints rather than footprints.

@oceanographic_editor @og_editor Oceanographicmag

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Contents O N T H E C OV E R

FEATURE S

W O L F MOT H E R

A sea wolf howls at dawn on the British Columbian coast, Canada.

Photograph by Steve Woods.

Despite surviving and thriving for thousands of years, the endemic coastal wolves of the Pacific Northwest are under threat. Unsurprisingly, it is humans that are driving them into scarcity.

Get in touch ED I TO R

Will Harrison

CR EAT I V E D I R E C TO R

Amelia Costley

D EP U T Y E D I TO R

Beth Finney

CO N T R I B U T I N G E D I TO R

Hugh Francis Anderson

D ES I G N A S S I S TA N T

Joanna Kilgour

PA RT N E R S H I P S D I R E C TO R

Chris Anson

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YO U R O C E A N IMAGES

@oceanographic_mag @oceano_mag Oceanographicmag

A S S TO C K E D I N

For all enquiries regarding stockists, submissions, or just to say hello, please email info@oceanographicmagazine.com or call (+44) 20 3637 8680. Published in the UK by CXD MEDIA Ltd. Š 2021 CXD MEDIA Ltd. All rights reserved. Nothing in whole or in part may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.

ISSN: 2516-5941

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A collection of some of the most captivating ocean photography shared on social media, both beautiful and arresting. Tag us or use #MYOCEAN for the opportunity to be featured within these pages.

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CONTENTS

20%

S YMBO L OF HOPE

SH A R K S & CLI M AT E

PR O FIT-S HA R ING CO M MITM ENT TO O CEA N CO N SERVAT IO N .

A PR O M IS E WE'R E PR O UD O F.

RAY O F R A R IT Y

PR IS T IN E PA L AU

Since discovering one of the largest aggregations of whale sharks in the world, great progress has been made in protecting these giants of Isla Mujeres. But there is much more work to be done, and we must all play our part.

Sharks in French Polynesia are threatened by a stressor that affects all life on Earth: climate change. The Physioshark research program, based in Moorea, investigates how early life stages of reef sharks cope with climate change. Can the sharks keep pace?

There have been fewer than 60 confirmed sightings of the ornate eagle ray, often referred to as the unicorn of the sea. Is this species emblematic of the beauty and mystery of the ocean, as well as the threats we pose to it?

When it comes to marine conservation, we have a lot to learn from Palau's historical traditions.

However, implemented conservation strategies require all nations to commit to a more sustainable future, before it's too late.

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B E H IN D TH E L E N S

C O LUMN S

DAVID DOUBILET

THE SOCIAL ECOLOGIST

T HE O C E A N AC T IV IS T

Each issue, we chat with one of the world’s leading ocean photographers and showcase a selection of their work. In this edition, we meet renowned National Geographic photographer, David Doubilet.

Big wave surf champion, environmentalist and social change advocate Dr Easkey Britton reflects on the power and benefits of being in water – especially at a time of such collective trauma as is being faced around the world currently.

Freediver and founder of I AM WATER, Hanli Prinsloo, reveals how she is managing to stay connected with the ocean at a time when she is unable to visit it due to the pandemic: mind diving.

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Ron Watkins Cuba "I was free diving down to about 3m under our boat," says Watkins. "I waited as the curious crocodile approached and I was able to capture this image right as the crocodile quickly swam past."

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Raja Iliya Hawaii A mother spinner dolphin and her calf swim through calm waters one morning off the west coast of Maui. These dolphins hunt in deeper waters at night, swimming into shallower bays to rest during the day.

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Nicolas Winkler Dominica Canadian competitive freediver, national and continental record holder, Sheena McNally, plays in a school of fish after a training session in SoufriĂŠre.

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Celia Kujala Canada "Play is very important in the development of young Steller sea lions and they love playing with anything they find in their environment," says Kujala. "I captured this image just as this sea lion presented a starfish to me."

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WOLF

mother Despite surviving and thriving for thousands of years, the endemic coastal wolves of the Pacific Northwest are under threat. Unsurprisingly, it is humans that are driving them into scarcity.

Wo rd s a n d p h o t o g ra p h s b y S t eve Wo o d s

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PREVIOUS PAGE: Coastal wolves use the beaches of the Pacific Northwest as 'highways', covering great distances quickly.

THIS PAGE: A female wolf searches for morsels of food on the tide line at sunset.

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he spine-tingling howls of a pack of wolves is something you never forget.

Under the cover of darkness, we slipped out of our tents and trekked along the beach in the pouring rain. We were headed to the hides we had strategically placed the day before at the tip of a small headland. We crawled in on the first day of what would turn out to be one of the most memorable and exhilarating experiences of my life.

Usually, when you enter a photographic hide, you settle in and expect hours, days, even weeks of inaction as the animals you are hoping to photograph slowly get used to the humans hiding in tents on their turf. This experience was very different.

No sooner had we managed to settle into position – cameras semi-dried and wet sand dusted off – when a pack of coastal wolves sprinted onto the beach in front of us. They fanned out and proclaimed to every occupant of the beach and forest that this was their territory by letting out an ethereal and continuous barrage of howls.

From youngest to oldest, their howls were so loud they were audible more than a kilometre away at base camp. They could be heard even over the crashes of the waves that were rolling in from the stormy Pacific Ocean a dozen or so metres from our cold toes and expensive camera gear.

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“They fanned out and proclaimed to every occupant of the beach and forest that this was their territory by letting out an ethereal and continuous barrage of howls.�

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An alpha male wolf howls at dawn – the "loudest of all", says photographer Steve Woods. "It really put you in your place.

His message was unmistakeable."

Two days prior, shortly before boarding the small aircraft that would deliver us to our destination, we were ruthlessly eliminating pieces of equipment from our kit list to reduce the carrying load, only allowing ourselves the most basic personal gear. As we rearranged our bags, we patiently watched the weather forecasts and eyed the storm that was headed right for base camp.

Paul Nicklen, Maxwel Hohn, John Kelsey and I were headed out to photograph a story for a number of NGOs on the plight of the endemic Coastal Wolf of the Pacific Northwest. Our destination was the outer islands of the temperate rainforests of British Columbia. Due to hunting pressure, I can’t reveal the exact location of our expedition.

The weather was fierce. As the storm rolled in, it looked increasingly likely that our pilots would have to keep the planes grounded due to safety concerns. Then, a small weather window opened up, giving us an opportunity. We moved quickly, loading up the planes with our streamlined gear, 600lbs of camera equipment and essential supplies.

As we flew low over the majestic forests and peaks of coastal British Columbia, the impact of logging was stark. The loss of the wolves’ natural habitat is obvious, with clear cuts everywhere, only visible from altitude due to the clever way the forests are felled to preserve aesthetics from the ground.

Through the low cloud and driving rain, the white sand beach that was to be our landing strip came into view and our pilot circled it a couple of times to recce the best landing spot. It was important to land on the thin strip of hard damp sand sandwiched between the soft dry sand and the unstable sludge near the water’s edge. I’ll admit Paul and I both breathed a small sigh of relief as she expertly put us down safely on target.

Our friend Tom McPherson at Seaforth Expeditions greeted us and we ferried our gear to safety, looking forward to some warm food in the tents as the weather closed in and battered us with wind and rain.

We had made it.

Coastal wolves are genetically different from their inland cousins. They are slightly smaller and leaner as they don’t have to withstand the harsh temperatures and conditions of the interior. Like their cousins, however, they are becoming increasingly rare. Habitat loss due to human activity is, as usual, a factor, from trophy hunting to deforestation and broader government policies. The Canadian government’s Wolf Cull program has killed more than 1,000 wolves so far, at a cost of $2.2 million (Pacific Wild). Wolves are a keystone species under significant threat. Culling their numbers is misguided and irresponsible.

Also known as rain wolves (because of the very heavy rainfall in BC) and sea wolves (because of their habitat’s close proximity to the Pacific Ocean), coastal wolves occupy a near mythical role in British Columbia’s natural history. They are a charismatic species, as well as biologically fascinating.

Rain wolves are part of an exclusive group of mammals that derive part or all of their food from the sea. They have discovered a source of regular and varied protein that is delivered to them daily and in abundance. It is no coincidence that many of these mammals live in the nutrient rich and biodiverse Pacific Northwest regions of North America.

Starting in around March, herring return to the shallow inlets of British Columbia and deposit their eggs up and down the coast. This provides a bounty for many coastal predators including wolves, bears, sea lions and grey whales. Later in the year, the salmon return to the rivers and streams, also spawning in huge numbers. This provides an even greater food source for predators. While the herring spawn and will, in most cases, escape alive, the humble salmon will die further up river once they have spawned. Their nutrient rich carcasses fertilise and feed the ecosystem, decomposing into the riverbeds and banks. They are devoured by eagles, bears, wolves and coyotes, spreading vital nutrients across the coastal rainforest.

These two huge natural events only serve to supplement the rain wolf ’s rich and varied diet of crabs, shellfish, abalone and even kelp from the sea. They can also hunt small deer and sea otters, or scavenge on washed up carcasses of sea lions and cetaceans.

This wealth of food has enabled the wolves to survive for thousands of years as part of a balanced coastal habitat – until humans arrived.

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A coastal wolf stares out from behind the vertebrae of a dead sperm whale.

A bounty like this can support a generation of cubs, ensuring their survival into adolescence.

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“This wealth of food has enabled the wolves to survive for thousands of years as part of a balanced coastal habitat – until humans arrived.”

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“They are becoming increasingly rare. Habitat loss due to human activity is, as usual, a factor, from trophy hunting to deforestation and broader government policies.�

THIS PAGE: Two wolves play on a beach. Play time deepens the bond between members of a pack.

PREVIOUS PAGE, clockwise from top left: - A wolf yawns on its way back to the forest after a breakfast of kelp and whale.

- The wolf mother encourages her cubs to join her and feed on the calorie-rich whale carcass.

- The wolf mother carries a large piece of decomposing whale blubber, storing it elsewhere for it to rot further for her cubs.

- A wolf relaxes on the beach, communicating to the visiting photographers who is in charge.

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As the wolves howled and the rain poured the adrenaline kicked us into action and we started to photograph and film the scene in front of us. Because it was still so dark, our cameras were pushed to their technical limits. There were four of us, in two separate hides just a few metres from each other and none of us could believe what we were seeing. We counted upwards of ten wolves and looked on in disbelief as the adults of the pack trotted up the beach, after their dawn howling, in search of food. We were left wondering if this first meeting would also be our last.

Drinking hot coffee and still shaking with excitement, we caught a glimpse of what would prove to be the key factor to our success on the expedition. Cubs. One, two, three sets of furry ears crept out from the forest onto the piles of kelp directly in front of us. A fourth and fifth came bounding out followed by two more chasing their tails. Seven wolf cubs in total, started to play in the kelp as dawn broke.

Wolf cubs are precious and are protected by the pack at all costs. They are kept on a tight leash until they are old enough to fend for themselves and contribute to the welfare of the others. They feed on milk until they are about three weeks old, at which point they start to eat meat. The adult wolves hunt, gorging themselves and bringing back a stomach full of food for the cubs. The cubs then induce regurgitation of that semi-digested food by licking at the mouth of the adult wolf. The cubs’ presence meant we knew the mother wouldn’t stray far from the den, which in turn would keep the rest of the pack coming back and forth, hopefully past our hides – regular wolf traffic.

As the shoot progressed we started to recognise and identify individuals and their behaviours. One that stood out for me was the mother. She would stay behind with the cubs when the other adults headed off to scavenge.

She was the one we saw and worked with the most. She was also the most handsome of the pack, with beautiful chestnut eyes and fur that morphed from black through to a rusty tan. The tones of the washed up kelp only complimented her appearance.

When photographing mammals from a hide, the subject generally knows you are there, the hide simply camouflages you so the animal doesn’t perceive you as a threat. The presence of cubs, however, changes things.

In this instance the mother has to take control of the situation and communicate an important message to both us and her cubs. She needs to show us that she is aware of our presence and comfortable that we do not pose a threat to her cubs, or at least that we do not pose a threat that she cannot handle. The second message that she needs to communicate is to her cubs. She needs to communicate to them that they are safe and can play in the open.

With her belly full of crustaceans and rotting whale meat, the mother wolf lies down to chew on some crunchy bull kelp.

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“In this instance the mother has to take control of the situation and communicate an important message to both us and her cubs.�

Cubs play with one another.

This roughhousing can go on for hours, allowing the cubs to establish bonds and learn how to hunt.

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The way she chose to do this was to walk very close to us and sit down as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Naturally, this was a gift for us as photographers. Not only were we able to observe and photograph her closely, but her cubs also came out to play right in front of us, always keeping one eye on her. Being able to understand and connect with an animal as gracious and intelligent as this mother wolf is, for me, the most wonderful thing about wildlife photography.

As the days went on, we learnt more about her and saw more of her behaviour. One of the most exciting moments came at dusk. It had been raining for three days straight when, slowly, the skies began to clear. When the rain finally stopped, the mother burst out of the forest, galloping around on the kelp. Her emotional release was clear. It was exactly what we too were feeling after the endless rainstorm. She climbed onto a prominent pile of kelp and dug into it. As she cleared off the top layers with her paws and mouth, steam began to rise from the lower, warmer layers that had started to decompose. She then dived into her warm kelp bath, visibly enjoying the heat.

It was a beautiful, intimate moment.

Our mission to photograph these beautiful wolves came against a backdrop of some excellent conservation

work being done by Raincoast Conservation (RC), an organisation based out of British Columbia that is working to protect the fragile ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. Since 1990, RC has protected thousands of square kilometres of critical habitat across the Great Bear Rainforest and facilitated rigorous peer-reviewed science and community engagement. In 2019 they raised $100,000 to put down the deposit on the hunting tenure of the Kitlope region in the Great Bear Rainforest.

In 2020 they sought to raise the remaining $650,000 required to buy the license outright. The images my colleagues and I created, along with the power of Paul Nicklen’s social media clout, saw those funds realised.

Today, all hunting of coastal carnivores is prohibited in the Kitlope region.

Personally, the most satisfying part of this story is how the wolf mother we met and spent time with became an ambassador for her species, and others. Wolves, cougars, lynx and bears live another day under the protections of the Kitlope region. It is hard to watch our species' rampant destruction of the natural world and it is often difficult to see how we can turn the tide. This story though, is one of success and hope. I am proud of what our wolf mother was able to achieve.

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Column

By Dr Easkey Britton

The social ecologist PLACE OF ENCOUNTER

“Going into the water and entering and inhabiting our bodies fully, is about being able to cross a threshold and enter into your own world.”

Photograph by Chris McClean

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@easkeysurf

W

e are experiencing a kind of collective trauma. How do we find our way through that? How do we heal? One of my favourite writers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, has written that if “we restore the land, we restore ourselves.”

And the same goes for water: if we restore the water, we restore ourselves; restore the ocean, restore ourselves. There is no quick fix, of course, and there are going to be many different ways to heal, but I do believe there is healing to be had in our connection to water.

Fear is held in the body. It can freeze us and numb us. Sometimes it’s only by moving our bodies that we notice the hold fear has on us: the physical tightness, stiffness and rigidity that comes with it.

Any kind of movement in nature is going to help with our restoration, with feeling into, moving through and shaking off that fear. And if we can’t go outside or be by the sea, even visualising the swaying movement of kelp on an incoming tide, or a seabird in flight and how it might feel to move like that can create connection and ease tension.

When surfing, there is this very raw ability to feel fear in the body without getting too caught up in the head. It is visceral. But with surfing there is also the opportunity to move through it. It allows you to have an experience of meeting fear, feeling your vulnerability and moving through it to discover something far more powerful than the fear itself on the other side. That feeling you get when you finish riding a wave, where there is a sense of total presence, and you are filled with a buzzing joy and full-body aliveness from the thrill of the ride.

I find that being in the sea really confronts me with my emotions. Whatever I’m bringing into the water will be mirrored and revealed. It can be a powerful way to work through fear because you have to. You can't resist a wave that's coming at you.

You have to learn to move through it or go with it, to ride it out and see where it takes you.

Water leaves a powerful imprint on our bodies.

We take something of our watery experiences with us when we leave the water. The feeling and sensation of having moved through fear and discovered what's on the other side stays in the body too. When we return to shore and life throws challenges at us or when waves come at us unexpectedly in our lives, the body knows – it remembers and knows it is possible to move through this new challenge, and to resurface on the other side of the turbulence.

This imprinting happens gradually, through a persistence of time given to the water. It is a gradual building up, or as health geographer Ronan Foley calls it, an “accretion”, where the layers of meeting waves and feeling into your fear build up and form a protective coating on your skin allowing you to call upon courage. But it isn’t always there. It isn't a

@easkeysurf

www.easkeybritton.com

given that if I one day I mastered being able to ride a 20 foot wave, that it'll happen again. Some days you are just off. There's just so many elements: sensitivity to our surroundings; the energy we’re holding; how we’ve tuned into our body; the emotions we have all of that will follow us into the water.

I think the power of surfing for me, is that the wave reveals or mirrors what it is that's most alive in me, all of it. Any emotional baggage; the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. It can leave me feeling quite exposed or raw. At times it can be uncomfortable. But that’s the magic of it all. The magic of water, it’s such a powerful place to meet yourself, again and again. It gives you permission to feel exactly what you’re feeling. That’s what it means to find strength in vulnerability.

I realised with my surfing that I was sometimes leaving parts of myself behind that I felt didn't fit.

It was a story I told myself, that there was this role I was expected to play; be fierce, be fearless, be brave, take it on the head as hard as the guys. In those moments I could never find any flow. I realised it was because I had left part of myself behind and hadn't showed up with all of who I am.

Surfing has become my place of encounter, where I really get to encounter myself.

This is a powerful thing. For women, especially, there is a lot of body shame and there’s a lot of fear around expressing things with the body and in the body. This is heightened during the pandemic, when how we are allowed to move, be, interact, touch is being increasingly controlled and restricted.

Going into the water and entering and inhabiting our bodies fully, is about being able to cross a threshold and enter into your own world. And sometimes being able to leave the land-life behind for even a moment. It’s a place where we can feel held by the water, as the sea swimmers in last issue’s column shared with us.

One of the most powerful things that anyone has shared with me was when I asked a woman in Iran, a student of sports science and mother to a young up-and-coming female surfer, what the sea means to her. She told me: “The sea is without judgment. It may be vicious, it may be calm, but it's always honest about how it is.” The ocean gives us permission to feel and be all of who we are. EB About Easkey Dr Easkey Britton, surfer and founder of Like Water, is a marine social scientist and honorary research fellow at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health. Her work explores the relationship between people and the sea, using her passion for the ocean to create social change and connection across cultures.

She currently resides in Donegal, Ireland.

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A SYMBOL

of hope Since discovering one of the largest aggregations of whale sharks in the world, great progress has been made in protecting these giants of Isla Mujeres. But there is more work to be done, and we must all play our part.

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ABOVE: A whale shark flushes massive volumes of water through it gills, filtering out nutrient rich tuna eggs.

LEFT: A whale shark tail fin comes within inches of photographer Shawn Heinrichs as he catches his breath at the surface.

PREVIOUS PAGE: A young snorkeler swims alongside a whale shark as it glides beneath a tourism boat.

I

was up in the tuna tower of the boat, looking out over the waters off Isla Mujeres, trying desperately to figure out what I should be looking for. How do you find an aggregation of whale sharks, in the middle of the ocean without any reference points? Unlike whales, whale sharks spend most of their time just beneath the surface of the water. We had a week to find them, and other than a small amount of data from our fishing captain’s logbook, we had nothing else to go off.

Eventually I saw a disturbance, perhaps half a mile away. When I asked the captain what it was, he told me it was just a school of bonito feeding. We kept cruising through pristine waters and ten minutes later, I could still see that same disturbance out over the waves. One thing I’ve learned while filming pelagic hunting activity is that bonito are ravenous. When they hit bait, they rip through it within minutes. If there are bonito around, a bait ball that lasts ten minutes is almost unheard of. We decided to take a closer look and began to head toward it, just as the activity started to die down. We were all looking at the horizon, just hoping for something, anything. Suddenly, a massive dorsal fin cut through the water right in front of the boat. Then another. And another.

We slowed the boat down, and for at least a mile of water towards the horizon, we could see hundreds of whale shark fins crisscrossing through the glassy waves. I tumbled off the boat with my housing and a whale shark almost bowled me over. Another soared beneath me and another cut across right in front of me. They took absolutely no notice of us – they were feeding on the eggs of a species of tuna called Little Tunny, and there were so many eggs in the water that the whale sharks were ploughing through the water like combines in a field. They didn’t care about us in the slightest. What we were experiencing was beyond anything anyone had ever imagined before that moment back in 2009. Until then, no-one had seen aggregations on that scale.

So, we spent the following five days going out every morning and trying to figure out where the whale sharks might be. After several hours of searching each day, we managed to find calm waters and, for few precious hours, it was just us and hundreds of whale sharks. As far as I know, at that time it was the most whale sharks ever documented in one aggregation. We had documented something truly extraordinary.

At the time, Isla Mujeres was reported to be the largest shark fishing island on the East Coast of Mexico.

It became apparent that there was an opportunity here, so over several years we worked with local operators to try and inspire people to start turning to tourism. By refining methods using GPS and refining our understanding of tuna spawning and whale shark aggregation processes, we made it easier for them to find these annual aggregations. Over the course of the next ten years, approximately 80% of the shark fishermen converted from longline fishing to running tours, increasing their incomes and standard of living by taking guests to go and see the whale sharks instead of hunting other species of sharks.

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“There is great power in ecotourism – an educational ocean experience that stays with a person forever. It’s one thing for someone to learn about the underwater world from a book or television documentary, but it’s quite another for them to come face-to-face with reality.”

A photographer captures images of a whale shark gulping down eggs from spawning tuna.

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TOP: One of the remaining shark fishermen on Isla Mujeres pulls in his longlines for the day.

MIDDLE: Shawn Heinrichs, his teammates and a huge whale shark.

BOTTOM: Hundreds of whale sharks and dozens of manta rays gather to feed each summer off Isla Mujeres.

Throughout the past few years, we’ve been working with on-the-ground partners to help the remaining 20% of active shark fishers create new tourism opportunities.

Currently, the shark meat from their catch gets sold in Mexico City as a low-cost fish option. It’s full of heavy metals and not safe for human consumption, though that’s not largely understood within the communities it is sold to. The shark fins move through an illicit network – they used to go through San Francisco and even Florida in large containers, and I’m sure some of them still do – that transports them to Hong Kong and China.

There is great power in eco-tourism – an educational ocean experience that stays with a person forever. It’s one thing for someone to learn about the underwater world from a book or television documentary, but it’s quite another for them to come face-to-face with reality.

Fellow conservationist and photographer Jim Abernethy and I teamed up to run SeaLegacy client expeditions to Isla Mujeres so that people can witness these incredible creatures for themselves. It is also important for guests to get to know more about the fishers who once hunted sharks in these waters, who are now so passionate about protecting these animals. When we take our group out to the boat, every morning we pass the jetty where the remaining shark fishers bring in their catch. You can sometimes see the sharks being hefted onto the dock, and smell the ammonia wafting through the air as the shark meat is processed. When people experience that, they go home with a new perspective and understanding. They are inspired and motivated to become part of the solution – protecting the ocean is no longer and abstract concept but rather a personal calling. That’s what we’re trying to do. To get people to care about these animals.

Often, we see our holidays solely as a reward. There was a time when all we needed to concern ourselves with was relaxing and not much else. But we are closing in on eight billion people on this planet, and we are consuming at a rate of almost two planets’ worth of resources annually.

In the past 50 years, we have taken more than 90% of the large fish from the ocean. We still have our foot on the accelerator, placing more pressure than ever before on commercial fish extraction. We don’t have two planets.

We’ve got to shift our perspective in terms of how we use our precious time. One of the most powerful ways we can vote is with our wallets. Where we choose to spend our money has a lot to do with what happens in these areas. If we choose to work with tour operators who have a sustainable viewpoint, who are working with

communities to drive change, who are helping support ecosystems that are either under threat, or are pristine and need to be protected, then we are casting our vote for nature and for the future.

As whale shark tourism grows in the waters off Isla Mujeres, so too has the number of people trying to take advantage of that industry. In the past five years, there’s been an influx of powerful commercial tour operators from Cancun securing more of the licenses that the former fishers of Isla Mujeres rely on for their livelihood.

While some might argue that there is a risk of ‘loving nature to death’, if licenses are limited without concern for who is affected, the underdog former shark fishers will be pushed out of the tourism industry and will have no choice but to return to unsustainable fishing practices.

The bottom line is that tourists don’t kill whale sharks – nets, lines, harpoons and large, fast-moving vessels do. Striving to achieve better management practices is always important, however in doing so we must keep a holistic perspective that considers both the animals and environments we are looking to protect, as well as the communities that hold the keys to protecting them.

It is so important that we are conscious and do our due diligence on the places we go on holiday, who we work with and where we spend our money. We can choose to set an example so that people in our personal networks can take note and follow in becoming part of that change.

Ultimately, we can build entire webs of people who are sustainable in their spending habits, and that will lead to change on a level we have not seen before.

Despite the massive influx of tourism, we still have hundreds of whale sharks feeding in the same way they always have, in the same places. We’ve noticed some slight behavioural changes – they’ve become more likely to turn away once they see people jump in the water, for example – but we haven’t seen avoidance of their food source, which is important.

Through community dialogue, using good examples and increasing the adherence to policies, there are now numerous local guides who adhere to strict interaction practices. It is important to them that guests adhere to the rules too. This self-governance has had a profoundly positive impact. It’s about educating not only the communities and the operators, but also the onlookers about the reality of the situation and the bigger picture.

Engaging a community in a large-scale transformation away from an exploitative, extractive industry, moving closer and closer towards sustainable practices and a long-term tourism industry, is the objective.

People often associate whale sharks with manta rays as some of the most charismatic megafauna in the ocean, but in my experience, they are very different. Manta rays have highly evolved brain structures – they’re extremely social animals and they’re incredibly sensitive to human presence in the water. Whale sharks on the other hand, have very small brains. They go about their business, largely regardless of whatever it is that you’re doing. But at the same time, they exude innocence. They live in a

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Bathed in sun rays, three manta rays twirl beneath a feeding whale shark.

“The whale sharks of Isla Mujeres can act as a symbol of hope. We helped reveal a truly profound aggregation of vulnerable marine life, just a few miles off the coast of a metropolis like Cancun. It reminds me that some of those great aggregations we read about in books still exist today.�

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world of their own and from that comes vulnerability, which is ironic because this is one of the largest fish in the ocean. They’re vulnerable because they have no protective mechanisms, nothing to stop you from harming them other than their size. When I spend time with a large whale shark, I reflect on a creature that has grown slowly over time, while navigating an ever-changing sea structure. Once, the ocean was a very safe place for the whale shark, but nowadays there are numerous dangers. Somehow, this creature has made it to adulthood and it’s allowing me to interact with it, despite its vulnerability. It speaks to what makes the ocean so different from terrestrial experiences. In the ocean, one can still approach wild animals, albeit with great caution. Whale sharks are some of the best ambassadors for the ocean – elegant and harmless giants that like to swim near the surface and allow you to be near them. It’s as if they’re saying, “We’re here, we’re vulnerable and we need your protection.”

One of the most valuable tools we have in our society is the art of storytelling, of sharing our experiences with those creatures who can’t speak for themselves.

The key enemies of effective conservation appear to me on three different levels – ignorance, apathy and greed. However, we now live in a world where anyone can use their voice and be heard. We are all storytellers now, and whether we share our experiences with our friends and families or to a wider audience on social media platforms, we can take a stand against those three adversaries with truth. The reason Jim and I invite guests on expeditions to witness the whale sharks of Isla Mujeres is to share with them the power of imagery and its role in conserving the ocean. With a combination of natural history, experience-based learning and filmography, we as a group can send a positive message through our networks when we get home. Our guests become part of a story and it is becoming ever more critical that we share that story.

The whale sharks of Isla Mujeres can act as a symbol of hope. We helped reveal a truly profound aggregation of vulnerable marine life, just a few miles off the coast of a metropolis like Cancun. It reminds me that some of those great aggregations we read about in books still exist today – despite the threats. If we just take a little more care, it’s not all lost. If we make even greater efforts, we could see the restoration of these spectacular aggregations all around the world. The whale sharks of Isla Mujeres are a beacon of hope, a reflection of the past, a message to us all saying that it isn’t all gone and if we make meaningful change in our lives, there’s so much more worth protecting in our global ocean.

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A COVID mask – blown overboard from one of the boats – drifts in the path of a feeding whale shark. A stark reminder of the impact of pollution.

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A dive camera with a mission The Paralenz Vaquita underwater camera Records in 4K 60fps with auto record function Automatic depth-controlled color correction 350m depth rating and extra light-sensitive lens Logs depth, temperature, conductivity, and location data for your Ocean impact Explore differently Learn more at paralenz.com

Behind the lens I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H

DAVID DOUBILET Behind the Lens places a spotlight on the world’s foremost ocean conservation photographers.

Each edition focusses on the work of an individual who continues to shape global public opinion through powerful imagery and compelling storytelling.

BEHIND THE LENS

Q&A DAV ID DOUBILET Award-winning and internationally-renowned underwater photographer and National Geographic contributor for 50 years.

David Doubilet is an American photographer and photojournalist. He has received numerous photography awards, including the Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

He is a member of the Academy of Achievement, Royal Photographic Society and International League of Conservation Photographers.

OC EA NO G R A PH IC M AGAZ I N E (OM ): W H E N D I D YOU FIRST CONNECT WITH TH E OCEAN? DAVID DOUBILET (DD): The first time I went underwater wasn’t in the ocean. It was at a little summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains, about 150 miles from where we live now – lots of archery, canoeing and baseball, that sort of stuff, and mountain climbing, which I detested.

But there was this little dock on the waterfront and I was asked to head in and clean out some branches and other detritus. I put on a mask – a French blue, soft, rubber mask that moulded to my face – and went underwater. Everything changed. I was eight years old at the time.

We had a family place on the Jersey shore and over the next few years I got in the water more and more. It became an obsession. Eventually I decided I wanted to take photographs underwater and decided to build an underwater camera housing for my Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. I thought about using a hot water bag, but it was too stiff. My father, who was a Professor of Surgery at NYU, suggested I use an anaesthesiologist bag, which is made from a soft rubber that expands easily and is tough. He duly brought one back from the hospital. That bag, with a reconfigured faceplate from an old mask that unscrewed easily, was my first underwater housing. I had to manipulate the controls – winding the camera and pushing the shutter – through the side of the bag. The first time we tried it, we hadn’t taken the air out, so we couldn't get it to sink! With the air out, we could get it down a couple of metres in depth. I was 11 or 12 by then. That was when my underwater photography journey truly began.

I was certified at the age of 12 in a New York pool and went to work at the age of 13 as a volunteer helper at a place called Small Hope Bay Lodge in The Bahamas, one of the first real dive resorts in the world. I was filling tanks, carrying tanks, occasionally tending bar, cleaning up, waiting on tables and, most excitingly, being an extra dive guide or safety dive guide. That’s where my connection with the ocean deepened.

OM : W H EN D ID P H OTOGRAP H Y BE C OM E M ORE TH AN A H OBBY FOR YOU? DD: Pretty early on to be honest. I began to get serious about underwater photography when I was 13. I wrote a letter to Jerry Greenberg in Miami and ordered the Argus C3 housing from Seahawk. That camera was in many ways the precursor to the Lewis Photo Marine, manufactured

by Leica in London. The Lewis Photo Marine had a choice of f-stop or focus, but not both.

Obviously I chose focus. I began to shoot in black and white because of the exposure latitude. It was a great decision – it taught me about light. At that point I began to get serious. One of my first black and white pictures won a prize in California. I think I was 14.

OM : H OW D ID T H AT F I RS T P ROF E S S I ON AL ASSIGNMENT FEEL AS A YOUNG P H OTOGRAP H ER? DD: This year I’ll have been working with National Geographic for 50 years – I shot my first story for them in 1971. I was invited by Stan Waterman, the Emmy Award-winning cinematographer, to join him in Eilat in the Red Sea to film Dr Eugenie Clark’s National Geographic research grant expedition to study garden eels. Garden eels are round as a finger, a metre tall, and live in large colonies that burrow into the sand. If you approach them they disappear like a mirage. I approached Bob Gilka, the magazine’s Director of Photography, for the assignment and he said no – Jim Stanfield, an extraordinary journalist and staff photographer, was already there. I said I was going anyway, and asked him for some film. Again, he said no. I had to make it happen myself.

Stan had shot some garden eels with a remote camera in Tahiti eight years before, and I'd seen that footage, so I knew what I was dealing with.

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In order to photograph the eels, I approached the team at OceanEye and asked them if they could make me a remote unit – one with about a 15-metre-long cord with a trigger at the end of it.

They said yes, and made one for me. As I’ve mentioned, garden eels, when you approach them, disappear into the sand, so you need a remote control camera. You can't put it on a tripod because that'll be too high for them. You want to be across and looking up. So I developed a flat plate monopod, weighted down with two dive weights and held together with the most important of all underwater photography accessories, electrical tape.

We set up the camera, Dr Clark’s team built a hide from burlap and pipe, and we spent two weeks diving with garden eels, under the cover of our hide, taking pictures. We did this every morning for two weeks. Then, one morning, we’re in the water at about 6:30am with a decent current running. The eels came out and started to feed right in front of the camera. Dr Clark swam out of the hide and looks down at the eels as I push the remote shutter button. We got what we wanted – a picture, taken blind, of Dr Clark and the eels. That was the key picture, the image that told a story and had drama to it. It was a story that National Geographic would now run.

O M: H A S C OL L ABORAT I ON BE E N AN EVER-P RESENT TH ROUGH OUT YOUR CAREER? DD: Collaboration is the key to everything. No photographer makes an image by themselves.

There’s always an expert behind the scene who points us in the right directions, takes us to where we need to be – people like Max Benjamin, who sadly died earlier this year, who with his wife Cecilie, founded Walindi diving resort in Papua New Guinea, a place that has supported a multitude of underwater photographers over many decades. Every picture you make as a photographer, you carry around these people with you, with the image. When I see a picture, I see those behind it.

O M: IN 2 0 1 9 , YOU W ON T H E U N D E RWATER SECTION FOR TH E WILDLIFE P H OTOGRAP H ER OF T H E Y EA R F OR A P H OTOGRAP H OF G ARDEN EELS. H OW DIFFERENT WERE YOUR TWO EX PER IE N C E S I N 1 9 7 1 AN D 2 0 1 9 ?

DD: The more recent image was taken off Dauin, in the Philippines. The garden eel colony there is enormous. Prior to going out and working on the story, I'd seen some pictures that were okay, but the photographers just weren’t getting close enough. I thought to myself: I need you to make this picture. I had Harold Hordosch at Seacam build me a remote system, again with a 15-metrelong remote control cord. I used the same flat plate and small tripod on the base of the flat plate, and the same electrical tape! The biggest difference, of course, was that the latest eel image was taken on a digital camera. And we didn’t have to build a hide this time – Jennifer [Hayes, a marine biologist and photographer, and David's wife] and I had a shipwreck to hide behind, enabling us to watch the eels swaying and feeding before clicking the remote shutter. The technology has certainly changed but the eels are as remarkable and beautiful now as they ever were.

O M: H OW D I D T H E E VOL U T I ON F ROM FILM TO DIGITAL AFFECT YOU AS A P H OTOGRAP H ER? DD: The most important and useful aspect of the digital revolution is the ability to see your pictures instantly. It means you can correct yourself instantly. You can improve the picture or try something different the next day – you can really make the technology work for you. The other end of it, which took people a long while to realise, is how the relationship between negative and print transitioned too. Ansel Adams, who was a musician before he was a photographer, said: “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print is the performance”. With a digital image, the score comes after the edit, using tools like Photoshop. That doesn’t mean cheating – adding subjects to your image, for example – but instead using this incredibly dense piece of information to enhance your image via saturation, contrast, brightness, and so on – all the things you could have done with a black and white negative.

Digital has also pretty dramatically reduced the luggage load! I once spent 40 days and nights on Howard Rosenstein’s ship Fantasy in the Red Sea. I took ten cameras out, along with 600 rolls of film. You imagine, even if I was able to take all ten cameras underwater with me, a 36-roll film in each, I’d be able to make just 360 images! Compare that with the capabilities of memory cards today, its unfathomable. When I landed back in Paris from the Red Sea, those films now filled with assignment photographs from all that time at sea, I shipped them in three different shipments and headed off on another job. I didn't see those pictures for three months. Back then, you’d do a story and didn’t get to see your pictures. Digital has fundamentally changed the nature of assignment photography. Amazingly in roughly 45 film assignments, I never lost a shipment.

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Q&A Continued...

Of course, we have to hold on to the physical side of photography – that’s the aspect of this technological advancement that we have to be wary of. So much photography is digested in the digital space now. Underwater photographers are making pictures that have never been made before – they’re getting better and better every day, every year. We’re making the best pictures we've ever made. At the same time – and this is the bit nobody is really taking about – alongside our digital revolution, printing has had a revolution, the quality of inks and paper, the ability to translate a digital file onto a piece of paper. So here’s the problem: we are now making the best pictures that have ever been created, but we’re looking at them on tiny phone screens. You have to step away from the internet to truly experience art. Photography, as an art form, belongs on the printed page – magic brought to life.

OM: IN YO UR 6 0 Y E ARS OF BE I N G I N OR ON T H E OCEAN, H OW H AVE YOU SEEN IT CH ANGE? DD: Jennifer and I are working on a project with National Geographic called 'Coral through the lens of time'. We've been returning to places we have visited for stories in the past, like Guam, Papua New Guinea and sites along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. We’re re-photographing particular spots to compare images over time, and then geo-tagging each image so that when I get eaten by a shark or run over by a taxi cab, other photographers will be able to create images at the exact same place and see how things have changed and bring to life the devastation of bleaching events, for example. The most important instrument of communication and science is photography, especially when discussing what is happening to the ocean right now. Images have the power to celebrate, they certainly have the power to humiliate and they have the power to illuminate. They also have the power to convince the unconvinced. And, most importantly for Jennifer and I, they have the power to open people's minds to the sea.

OM: A R E T H ER E AN Y M OM E N T S T H ROU GH OUT YOUR CAREER TH AT FILL YOU WITH A PA RT I C U L A R S E N S E O F P R I D E ?

DD: A picture I made of my friend, Howard Rosenstein, in a cave in the Red Sea was one of a selection of images put on the Voyager Golden Record, a phonograph that was sent into space in the ‘70s to summarise life on Earth should any extra-terrestrial life find it. I’m hugely proud of that. I'm also intensely proud of influencing two generations of underwater photographers – people who have brought the beauty of the ocean to millions of people and been a part of the increased protections we now see across our oceans. That generational continuity is a wonderful thing: places I’d visited years ago to make pictures, that then inspire other underwater photographers to visit and make pictures, that then connect with the scientists, decision-makers and the wider public. That’s how sharks get protected in places like The Bahamas, how stingrays get protected in the Cayman islands, how the Red Sea becomes a National Park, how the Philippines’ Tubbataha Reef gets protected. Photographers are a critical part of that process.

OM : YO U A R E W I D E LY R E G A R D E D A S O N E O F THE PIONEERS OF SPLIT SHOTS. WHAT IS IT AB O UT OVER - U N D E R S H OT S T H AT I S S O S P E CIAL? DD: I love taking over-under pictures, but there's a caveat to them: they are, I think, the hardest pictures to take underwater – technically, philosophically and conceptually. This planet of ours is divided into two biospheres, but they may as well be two completely different worlds, the air world and the water world. As an image, the split shot looks at this border between these two worlds. It is the most important border in the world by the way, and it's molecular thin. I’ve always found that fascinating. It’s also worth thinking about the fact that for the majority of our existence as a species, we have looked out across the ocean – some of the earliest human dwellings were in caves along the east coast of modern-day South Africa, facing out to sea. It has largely been a mysterious horizon, ‘out of sight, out of mind’, a place disconnected from ours, other than as a source of food. To be able to connect those two worlds is a beautiful thing.

The challenge is ensuring there is enough drama in both halves of the image. Throughout a career that's spanned 60 years, with 50 of those taking split shots seriously, I only have a handful of images that I love. A lot of people shoot split shots, but they don't seem to appreciate the need to establish the relationship between the underwater world and the overwater world, to have the

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lighting right, to maintain fascination throughout. With the technology and dome ports available now it’s easy to get a split shot, but you can't just shoot them, you have to look for all those key elements. You’ve got to find that focus – a city skyline or a castle on the Dalmatian Coast – then the poetry will follow. There are some true masters of the craft, such as Matty Smith in Australia.

O M: W H AT H AS T H E OC E AN TAU GH T YOU ABOUT YOURSELF? DD: When I'm underwater, I'm weightless. I can stop. I can think. I can contemplate. I find that time underwater gives me a tremendous sense of perspective. Spending an hour in the ocean, thinking, working, shooting and looking around at the beauty of it all can be very contemplative.

When I come out of the water and see this air world in which we spend most of our time, I’m gifted with this enormous perspective on who we are and what life is on this planet.

Perspective is everything. Think of the Earthrise image made on the Apollo 8 mission, when the astronauts came out of the shadows and saw the Earth for the first time, rising on the horizon.

That was – and still is – a picture that said to all humanity, here's a mirror image of yourself that you've never seen before. You see that this is all we have. There is nothing else. There is no Plan B because there is no Planet B. We have to take care of it. We have to protect it. That picture also showed us that this world we live on, viewed from afar, is blue. This is, as Sylvia Earle says, Planet Ocean, not Planet Earth. It's 70% ocean, most of which we don't understand. We have no clue.

OM: WHAT ROLE CAN PHOTOGRAPHY HAVE IN ENHANCING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEEP OCEAN? DD: Underwater photographers have the most fun, but we also produce some of the most important documents on this planet. We have had 70 years exploring the shallows, and much less time than that exploring the deep. Exploring the deep doesn't mean going to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and coming back up, it means going to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, making really good pictures, coming up and realising that's just one spot – one singular spot on the ocean floor. Of course, most of the rest of the ocean is not that deep, but all that space between those deep trenches and the shallows we know is largely unexplored. Understanding these deeper worlds is the next chapter in underwater photography. Look at the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and the Gulf of Alaska, for example, incredibly productive, but deep and dark.

These are the spaces that photography needs to go next. We have to push into these spaces, and that's the duty of the next generation of photographers. That’s the next perspective.

O M: YO U AN D YOU R W I F E J E N N I F E R COME AS A TEAM. TELL US ABOUT TH AT DYNAMIC. DD: The greatest part of diving together is to be able to share what you have done with somebody else who appreciates it or, perhaps more importantly, picks it apart, because you learn little from your successes, you only really learn from your mistakes. Jennifer and I have been able to go into the sea together and look at things with two minds and four eyes but as a singular team. It’s allowed us to see a lot more. She certainly sees a lot more than I do. I tend to get stuck on something on a reef and really start working at it like most photographers do, whereas she looks around and notices more – that’s the difference between a photographer and a scientist I suppose! Jennifer tends to see around corners more than I do, and sees the bigger picture, a more scientifically accurate picture rather than just the poetry of something. That’s a great asset for us as a storytelling team. Images are what we’re always searching for on any assignment, but the science is what drives the story and stitches it all together.

O M: W H AT ’ S N E XT F OR YOU BOT H ?

DD: Alongside 'Corals through the lens of time', which will take up quite a bit of our time, we hope to continue our work in the Arctic and Antarctic, and we hope to get back to the Great Barrier Reef, Raja Ampat and the Philippines. And Jennifer will always return to the harp seal nursing grounds on the frozen sea ice in the middle of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Right now, we’re working just off our dock, shooting in the Saint Lawrence River as the seasons change and the water runs clear. We have a world of shipwrecks here, as well as a lot of shallow water stuff. In fact, reverting back to our discussion about splits shots, the last half-and-half picture I made was of a herd of cows at the riverside here. It’s a great local project that’s keeping us busy as this virus continues to put a lot of things on pause. But I suppose that’s the thing – we, as photographers, never stop making pictures. It’s an incredible world in which we live, and we can never stop documenting that, never stop pushing in new directions whatever challenges or obstacles are laid before us. Life will always be about the imagery. At any moment throughout the passage of time, throughout this short history of ours, the thing that speaks the loudest, regardless of the era in which it was taken, is imagery. That remains both our passion and our mission.

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Philippines A male clownfish attentively guards his clutch of eggs in Anilao. This fish father will aggressively attack any intruder that approaches the eggs that its female partner deposited beneath the mantle of its host anemone.

French Polynesia A green sea turtle hatchling makes its way to the open sea off Marutea Atoll in French Polynesia.

Australia Australian sea lions play in a bed of seagrass near Hopkins Island.

These sea lions were once hunted to near extinction, but are now making a slow comeback.

Australia A double headed wrasse patrols its coral kingdom in the shadow of Lord Howe island, Australia.

Botswana A Bayei fisherman stands in his mokoro, peering into the lily gardens of Botswana's Okavango Delta, a tectonic trough that creates a seasonal wetland in the heart of the Kalahari desert.

Cuba An American crocodile casually flashes an impressive set of teeth in the mangroves of Gardens of the Queen, Cuba.

Canada Continually sculpted by wind and wave, a once majestic iceberg had come to rest and retire in the shallows of Blanley Bay in the Canadian Arctic.

Antarctica A crabeater seal wakes up with a big yawn on a bergy bit near Palmer Station.

Bahamas A squadron of lemon sharks patrol the surface, beneath a purple sunset. The Bahamas declared its waters a shark sanctuary in 2011, setting an example in shark conservation.

Papua New Guinea Father and son fishermen glide over shallow corals in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea, a rich coral wilderness in the corner of the Coral Triangle.

Cuba A trio of silky sharks appear well choreographed as they gather at dusk in the Gardens of the Queen, Cuba. This marine protected area is a living Caribbean museum.

Antarctica A group of chinstrap and Gentoo penguins gather on a bergy bit near Danco Island, Antarctica,

Behind the lens DAVID DOUBILET Japan Dolphins are herded into the harbour in Futo, Japan and walled off from the sea with nets. Fishermen then cut each dolphin's carotid artery letting the mammal bleed out, creating a scarlet sea. The dolphin cries permeated the concrete David was standing on and travelled through his entire body.

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David has spent more than five decades exploring and documenting the far corners of the world, from remote tropical coral reefs to rich temperate seas and the polar regions. His personal challenge is to create a visual voice for the world’s ocean and to connect people to the incredible beauty and silent devastation happening within the invisible world below. David has photographed almost 70 stories for National Geographic and is the author of 12 books. In 2001, David was named a National Geographic Contributing Photographer-in-Residence. He is the recipient of the Explorers Club Lowell Thomas Award and Lennart Nilsson Award for Scientific Photography.

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SHARKS AND

climate change

Despite having the largest shark sanctuary in the world, sharks in French Polynesia are threatened by a stressor that affects all life on Earth: climate change.

The Physioshark research program, based in Moorea, investigates how early life stages of reef sharks cope with climate change. Can the sharks keep pace?

Wo rd s b y J o d i e L . R u m m e r a n d O rn e l l a C . We i d e l i P h o t o g ra p h s b y Vi c t o r H u e r t a s a n d To m Vi e ru s

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“The results of our surveys were pretty compelling. Most of the marine megafauna species living in or visiting the country were spatially aggregating along a 400-kilometre area of the southern coast. This was the critical habitat that needed to be prioritised for protection.�

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verfishing represents the top threat to sharks and their relatives worldwide. Despite 450 million years of evolution and surviving five mass extinctions, the 1,154 known shark and ray species on the planet today are now facing new challenges and changes to their habitats that are occurring at rates that have never been documented in human history. Today, an estimated 18% of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction due to human-induced stressors. Yet, that number could be much higher because scientists are lacking data on nearly 42% of shark and ray species.

Marine Protected Areas – especially shark sanctuaries – help remove this top stressor from the lives of sharks and rays. In 2020, shark sanctuaries protected nearly 16 million km2 of ocean – an area nearly the size of Russia.

Although seemingly enormous, this accounts for less than 5% of the total area of the Earth’s ocean. Of the 15 countries supporting shark sanctuaries in their waters, French Polynesia protects the largest area, totalling nearly 4.8 million km2. However, prior to implementing its shark sanctuary, it was exporting more than 500 tonnes of sharks and eight tonnes of fins to China, annually.

While sanctuaries are hugely important, they do not protect sharks and rays from the other top stressor facing the ocean today: climate change. In fact, evidence suggests the ocean is heating up around 40% faster than previously estimated. The Great Barrier Reef, for example, has warmed by 0.8°C since 1880 due to human-induced climate change. It has bleached three times between 2016 and 2020. While warming of less than one degree since the Industrial Revolution may not seem like much, it has been enough to kill nearly two-thirds of the corals on the largest reef on the planet. Moreover, the Paris Agreement target, which was agreed upon by nearly all global nations and called for limiting the global average temperature rise to 1.5°C in an effort to significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change, is close to being surpassed.

Sharks and rays are perhaps more at risk than other fish because they have extremely slow generation times.

They take a long time to reach sexual maturity, from a few years to a couple decades, depending on the species. They grow slowly and do not produce many young. Put simply, they can't reproduce fast enough to keep pace with the rate at which humans are changing the planet.

The Physioshark program was founded in 2013 and is led by Dr Jodie Rummer, an Associate Professor at James Cook University in Australia. The goal of the research program is to investigate how climate change impacts newborn and juvenile reef sharks – the sharks born today represent the adult shark populations of the future.

Moreover, understanding how human and environmental impacts affect these sharks is crucial knowledge for developing effective shark conservation strategies.

PREVIOUS: A blacktip reef shark pup at the CRIOBE research facility on Moorea, French Polynesia.

THIS PAGE: An adult blacktip reef shark on the coral reefs of the Society Islands, French Polynesia.

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MAIN: Dr Jodie Rummer prepares to release a blacktip reef shark pup at a nursery site off Moorea, French Polynesia, following measurements, DNA samples, and tagging procedures.

TOP: Close-up of the ventral side of a blacktip pup.

MIDDLE: Sampling gear used to measure, weigh, photograph and tag (microchip) reef sharks.

BOTTOM: A blacktip reef shark pup being measured in the field.

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“The results of our surveys were pretty compelling. Most of the marine megafauna species living in or visiting the country were spatially aggregating along a 400km area of the southern coast. This was the critical habitat that needed to be prioritised for protection.�

Mangrove habitats represent two or three of the ten potential nursery sites around the island of Moorea, French Polynesia. The sites may be key areas for food and protection from predators for newborn and juvenile reef sharks.

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The Physioshark program chose the island of Moorea, French Polynesia because of its status as a shark sanctuary. Here, the team can focus solely on the effects of climate change, as the local shark population faces no fishing pressures. The approach is physiology-based because physiological traits such as oxygen uptake (breathing), energy use, digestion, swimming, and reproduction are all key to securing healthy populations and future generations. The team largely investigates newborn and juveniles because they are already using challenging habitats, such as coastal lagoons and mangroves, that experience dramatic fluctuations in water quality and extreme temperatures and oxygen levels. Therefore, the way in which the newborn sharks cope with these conditions could shed light on how other sharks need to be prepared to cope with future climate change conditions. The team has identified ten potential nursery areas over the years around the coasts of Moorea in which newborn reef sharks can be reliably observed during 'pupping months' (October – February) and, through collaboration with the Centre for Island Research and Environmental Observatory (CRIOBE) on Moorea, can investigate key physiological traits not only in the field, but also in the laboratory under controlled experimental conditions.

During pupping months, the team heads out nearly every evening to one of the ten potential nursery sites.

There, sharks are captured between 17:00 and 20:00 using a 1.5m tall, 50m long gill net set perpendicular to the coastline. At some sites, only blacktip reef sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus) are captured, at other sites, only sicklefin lemon sharks (Negaprion acutidens), while at a few sites, both species are caught. Multiple measurements, such as length, girth, and mass are taken for each individual shark. To know which individuals are related and whether siblings hang out together, a small clip of the dorsal fin is taken for DNA analysis. To approximate the age of the sharks, the umbilical scars (belly buttons) are measured. Newborn sharks exhibit an open and circular scar, but the scar closes after four to five weeks. Furthermore, a tiny microchip – readable using a barcode scanner – is inserted into each shark just under the skin. That way, if and when a shark is recaptured in the future, the individual can be identified, and its growth can be calculated. From a smaller number of sharks, stomach contents and blood are collected. These samples help the team to better understand if and what the sharks have been eating, and the blood can indicate how well they are responding to stress. The whole sampling and data sequence is very quick, and sharks are released within five to ten minutes of capture. Then the team waits for the next shark to hit the net. Sampling sometimes ends before 20:00 if any sharks are transported back to the CRIOBE for laboratory experiments.

In the lab, the water quality of the aquaria where the sharks are maintained is controlled to simulate climate change conditions predicted for the years 2050 and 2100. These conditions include elevated temperatures,

as the oceans are predicted to warm by as much as 5°C by the end of the 21st century in some areas. In addition to absorbing the atmosphere’s heat, the ocean is also absorbing at least a third of the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, which is decreasing the ocean’s pH, a process called ocean acidification. Under these climate change scenarios in the laboratory, the sharks’ physiological performance – akin to their athletic ability – can be tested. Examples include swimming performance, the speed at which they can escape a simulated predator, reaction times, and the time it takes to recover from exercise. The team is also determining the maximum temperatures and minimum oxygen levels that sharks can handle based on the conditions they experience in the wild. Also, just like in the field, blood is collected before and after these tests to see how the sharks are coping with exercise and whether simulated climate change conditions have an impact.

Indeed, the team likes to refer to these sharks as athletes, because a lot of the data that are collected are not too different than what is measured for human athletes. However, the stakes are quite a bit higher for these aquatic athletes. Failure to ‘perform’ may mean the demise of a crucial population.

From laboratory experiments, the team has discovered that newborns of both shark species require more than three hours to recover from exercise, such as the exercise they must endure if they are accidentally caught by fishers or chased by a predator. When laboratory and field data are combined, the average recovery time for these sharks exceeds eight hours. Not only is this a long time, following exercise, to be vulnerable for any animal, but recovery is energetically costly too.

Recovery requires 15% of the energy these sharks need for swimming. Fortunately, the average temperatures that these newborn sharks are already experiencing during summer months (28-31°C) do not negatively impact energy use, exercise, recovery, or growth, and even make these sharks a bit better at coping with the low oxygen conditions they can also experience in their shallow water habitats from time to time. However, if sharks have to exercise at temperatures just a couple degrees higher, mortality estimates exceed 80%. The team thinks this is because the sharks’ blood loses the important biochemical properties that are key for oxygen transport at these higher temperatures. That finding is daunting.

Field measurements over the years across the ten nursery areas around Moorea suggest that, during summer months, nursery sites regularly experience temperatures approaching 36°C. From the laboratory experiments, it is suggested that newborn sharks can tolerate these high temperatures briefly but only if no other stressors are involved. But, what will happen to these newborn shark populations if coastal waters continue to warm?

Ocean warming does not occur alone, however. When newborn reef sharks are exposed to the elevated carbon dioxide conditions (ocean acidification) predicted by the year 2100, sharks exhibit changes in their blood,

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An adult blacktip reef shark on the sand flats around the island of Moorea, French Polynesia.

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possibly as a stress response and/or to aid oxygen transport throughout their body. Under these conditions, sharks also required more time to recover from exercise. While the effects of elevated carbon dioxide conditions were not nearly as dramatic for these sharks as those for ocean warming, such findings still raise alarm bells. Moreover, when these two climate change stressors are simulated in combination, sharks were shown to require more energy for basic maintenance costs. Altogether, this could upset ecosystem balance if key predators like sharks need more energy to survive.

What are the options for these newborn sharks? As the ocean continues to change due to human impacts, sharks have three main options: they can either move to habitats where conditions are more favourable, stay put and adapt to the new conditions, or die.

The shallow, nearshore habitats, although challenging with respect to dynamic and sometimes extreme environmental conditions, are thought to provide resources for these sharks that are key to survival. Upon birth, reef sharks receive no parental care. Therefore, in these shallow nurseries, reef sharks must learn how to hunt and how to escape predators.

Within a given pupping season, fewer than 50% of the newborn sharks will have full stomachs. This could be because they still have large energy stores in their livers and do not need to learn how to hunt right away. Or, it could mean that the food sources are not rich in quality. Protection may be the most important function of these shallow water habitats, which may explain why the newborns maintain such a small home range (less than 200m2) during this time of their life. For scale, that is a space smaller than a tennis court. So, when environmental conditions become more challenging with climate change, the option to move may not be feasible for these vulnerable newborn sharks.

Responding to variation in climate is not a new phenomenon for species – after all, sharks experienced the Ice Age. These newborn sharks, and perhaps sharks and rays worldwide, will have to make changes at the level of their DNA in order to survive climate change. Indeed, now that the physiological performance traits that are most dramatically affected by climate change conditions are known, the sharks’ DNA can be further investigated. Adaptation must occur over generations, however, and the slow generation times that are characteristic of sharks put them at real disadvantage in this respect, especially when considering the rate at which the planet is changing. In a 2013 study investigating 500 vertebrate species and how fast they evolved in the past, it was estimated that, in order to keep pace with the changing planet, sharks would need to evolve at a rate at least 10,000 times faster than they ever have in the past.

Physioshark’s findings so far emphasise the importance of shark sanctuaries and other types of Marine Protected Areas. French Polynesia is definitively setting an example that should be taken on board by other countries worldwide, but this is only a start. These types of conservation and management strategies are not protecting sharks, rays, and the ecosystems they support from climate change. While making it a global mission to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and decrease greenhouse gas emissions, we also need to ensure these vulnerable species and populations are not experiencing additional stressors in their habitats throughout their lifetimes.

Healthy marine ecosystems need healthy apex predators like sharks, and those predators need healthy ecosystems. We need to consider, now more than ever, that the decisions we make today are already determining what the ocean looks like tomorrow.

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Column

By Hanli Prinsloo

The ocean activist MIND DIVING

“I

t’s salty! Miss, it’s salty!"

I’m sitting here at the window, staring out at another beautiful and perfect ocean day. The sea is a sparkling array of blues, teal in the shallows where the kelp sways around sandy patches and dark navy from the deep to the horizon. A heaving flock of cormorants perform their synchronised flight a breath above the surface before splashing down again, only to repeat again and again, taunting me with their freedom. Small waves lap against the shore, sucking back to reveal limpet encrusted rocks and vibrant pools. I stare and stare. Imagining the kelp tickling my skin as I wade in, the push and pull of the gentle surge as I take a breath and swim down into the dappled world below. A flickering of fish streaming around me as I hang quietly, listening to the reef crackling. Starfish and urchins creating an explosion of colour along the seabed.

This is what I do now. I mind dive. Staring at the surface I visualise moments and actions and sensations that I have always taken for granted.

Never before these lockdowns has anyone forbidden me from entering the ocean. Never before have I had to mind dive days on end to manage the utter loss of my first love. In my pre-Covid life, I was in the sea at least once a day.

Not long ago on one of our I AM WATER Ocean Guardians workshops I helped a young girl enter the ocean for the very first time. This is not uncommon with the demographic we target. But on this particular day this little girl reminded me so deeply of just how very ingrained my privilege is.

Entering the water she jerked her head up and stared at me with wide eyes; ‘It’s salty!’ she exclaimed, cupping the water in her hand as she holds it out to me, ‘Miss, it’s salty!’ I cannot remember a time in my life that I did not know the sea is salty. For her, this was the first of a myriad of realisations during the two days she spent with us. Imagine, everything being new.

With our second lockdown in South Africa spanning over late December and into January, the beaches are closed for this very reason. For many people Boxing Day, New Years Day and the first days of January are the only days transport is organised to get to the beach. It’s tradition. It’s crowded. It’s a huge risk for the spread of a hyper virulent disease. For thousands the one guaranteed day of salty sea is gone. For me, my every day swims and dives will resume in just a few short weeks. The same goes for travel, or alcohol or other things we take for granted but are in fact a luxury and a privilege.

I will mind dive today and tomorrow and every day until I can taste the salt again, mindful of how very lucky we are and determined to see greater access for all those who only get one or two days a year at the beach, and lifetimes of not knowing what lies beneath the surface. HP

About Hanli Hanli Prinsloo is a South African freediver and ocean advocate. She is the founder of I AM WATER, a Durban-based charity that seeks to reconnect South Africa's underserved urban youth with the ocean. www.iamwaterfoundation.org

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@hanliprinsloo

@hanliprinsloo

@hanliprinsloofreediver

“This is what I do now. I mind dive.

Staring at the surface I visualise moments and actions and sensations that I have always taken for granted.�

Photography by David Gray / Finisterre

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A R AY O F

rarity

There have been fewer than 60 confirmed sightings of the ornate eagle ray, often referred to as the unicorn of the sea. Is this species emblematic of the beauty and mystery of the ocean, as well as the threats we pose to it?

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by Emilie Ledwidge

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D

o we really want to be part of a society that loses wild species every day due to its own destructive practices, those creatures never to be seen again other than in photographs? This is what was going through my mind when I encountered one of the rarest ray species in the world on the Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia – the ornate eagle ray.

Waking up for work knowing I will see a vast array of marine life during the day is a dream. The Ningaloo Reef is one of the best locations in the world to view pelagic life and I am one of the lucky few to photograph it.

It started off as just an ordinary day at work – hop in for a morning snorkel at one of the coral reef sites, where we commonly see turtles or sharks, followed by snorkelling with manta rays somewhere in Bateman Bay. After that, we continue to cruise around looking for dolphins, turtles and other marine life. “Emilie, do you want to get in the water with something?” asked one of the crew. Unaware of what it was but eager to get in the water with it, I rushed to get my fins, mask and camera. Within a minute I was in the water. From afar I thought the animal was a manta ray, but soon realised it was an eagle ray. Moments later I knew more precisely what it was and I could not believe my eyes. After seeing the strange but unique golden pattern on the ray’s back I realised I was sharing the water with an ornate eagle ray. These rays are classified as endangered and very little is known about them. There have been less than 60 recorded sightings worldwide.

My hands shook and my breathing quickened. I knew this was a special moment. Swimming above the ray on the surface I tried to keep my breathing under control – I wanted to keep up with her but also wanted to prevent spooking her before getting the opportunity to dive down again. Sharks and rays have special electroreceptive senses called ‘ampullae of lorenzini’ that enable them to feel electrical currents in the water. That includes me, my movements and my heartbeat. After freediving down to get a glimpse of her from above and then to the side, I decided to dive well in front of her. I arrived some distance in front of her, so as not to be invasive and giving her the opportunity to swim away if she felt uncomfortable. To my surprise, she kept swimming straight toward me. It was a humbling and magical moment that I will never forget.

Up until that encounter, I have never been able to photograph an eagle ray up close. They are notoriously skittish and often swim away quickly on seeing divers.

But I believe wildlife has a way of trusting people when they are in need of help the most, and I believe this particular ray knew I wanted to help protect her. That’s why she was so relaxed in my presence, and why she allowed me to photograph her in such close proximity.

When I was 15 years old, I learned about the many threats the ocean ecosystem faces from humankind, such PREVIOUS PAGE & RIGHT: An ornate eagle ray soars over a sandy seabed, Ningaloo Reef.

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“Moments later I knew more precisely what it was and I could not believe my eyes. After seeing the strange but unique golden pattern on the ray’s back I realised I was sharing the water with an ornate eagle ray.”

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TOP: A porcupine ray forages for food.

MIDDLE: A shovel nose ray on Ningaloo's sand flats.

BOTTOM: Four Jenkins whip rays glide over a cleaning station at Asho's Gap.

as overfishing, bycatch, shark finning and ray hunting. I was mortified. I knew from that moment what I wanted to do with my life; protect and conserve the underwater world. My focus would become sharks and rays.

Eight years later, underwater with an ornate eagle ray and able to capture some rare and beautiful images, that same feeling washed over me. Here was something that could connect with people, communicate an issue and help threatened wildlife. However many people the images reached didn’t matter, their beauty and the story they told did. Education is a powerful tool, and here was a chance to educate people about a beautiful creature endangered with extinction. More broadly, the images could also perhaps engage people with shark and ray biology, behaviour and the threats these species face.

It is no wonder this harmless and barbless animal has been given the name eagle ray – they soar so effortlessly through the water, with wingspans reaching in excess of two metres. Even its face has a bizarre beak-like appearance – the species uses its ‘nose’, or rostrum, to rummage through sandy seabeds in search of crustaceans, clams or other food. While many other species of eagle rays have sometimes been found in fevers of a hundred or more, ornate eagle rays are solitary and rarely seen – some refer to them as the ‘unicorn of the sea’.

The ornate eagle ray’s biggest threat is as bycatch – caught unintentionally by fishing vessels fishing for other species. If caught, the rays rarely make it back into the ocean alive. Fishing pressures, as well as their low reproduction rate, puts these animals at high risk of extinction. Unfortunately, their reproductive biology, growth rate and habitat distribution are still not fully understood, making it hard to accurately identify both risks and conservation measures – problems encountered by other ray populations around the world, including pelagic ray species such as manta rays, and benthic rays such as whip rays, shovelnose rays and porcupine rays.

Manta rays are one of the most mesmerising and graceful fishes in the ocean. They are also intelligent.

When you gaze into the eye of a massive five-metre animal and they look right back at you, you can sense the connection and bond that we as humans have with nature. Swimming with these beautiful beings is humbling, and it saddens me that they can be legally fished in Australian waters, including on Ningaloo Reef where I swim with them most days. Commonly found in the subtropical Indian Ocean and South-Pacific Ocean, reaching as far north as Japan and extending to the Polynesian Islands, manta rays play a huge role in Australia’s tourism industry and for the surrounding Pacific islands, some of which are reliant on tourism.

Throughout South-East Asia, manta rays are hunted for their dried brachial filaments, commonly known as

gill rakers. They are sold to venders who sell them on as ‘traditional Chinese medicine’ under the false pretence that they can boost the immune system and eliminate toxins from the body, even though there is no medical evidence to support this. The brutal reality is that most of the animal is disposed of once the gill rakers are carved out. The gill rakers represent profit, the rest of a manta’s body is of little value. The overfishing of manta rays is the key driver of the species’ population decline.

The blame for this overfishing doesn’t, therefore, lie with the fishermen – nor for other animals such as the ornate eagle ray caught as bycatch. It is the demand for these meats and medicines that compel the fishermen to continue fishing, and if local fishing regulations are not strong enough to prevent destructive practices, biodiversity will continue to be lost. On the flipside, amends to regulations and the legalities around certain practices can quickly improve the conservation prospects of overfished species. Furthermore, it can be of financial benefit to the fishermen too, if managed correctly.

Species such as manta rays are in particular need to protection given their low reproduction rates. Mantas aren’t sexually mature until they are eight to ten years of age. A pregnant female will carry her young for a year, before typically giving birth to just one pup. Furthermore, females usually gestate every few years, not annually.

The manta mating process is like magic. It is an incredible thing witnessing up to a dozen or more male manta rays chasing one female, as all of them flip and turn with speed and grace, like synchronised dancers performing midwater – all for the sake of reproduction.

Numbers slowly dwindle, leaving only the fastest and most determined male.

I feel privileged to spend my time with such a diverse range of species every day on Ningaloo Reef, witnessing spectacular, wild and unique behaviours. While the natural ocean currents and structure of the reef is what brings in such an array of wildlife, I do also feel the minimal threats faced by the species that call this environment home also plays a significant role. Ningaloo is, to my mind, the perfect example of what can happen when we take care of the natural world. There is no ocean overexploitation here, the coastline is lightly populated and agricultural practices are controlled (preventing chemical runoffs.) The reef is healthy and thriving, its diversity intact.

All of these things are, of course, changeable. This planet’s wildlife is at our mercy. It is up to us to ensure that healthy habitats such as Ningaloo remain just so – beautiful and bountiful. There should be no risk of future generations not having the opportunity to see the same species that we have the privilege of seeing today.

The visceral magic of sharing the water with an ornate eagle ray is something few people in any generation will experience, but we have to ensure that those species – and experiences – remain out there, and that pages such as these don’t become just another story of a mesmerising species that once was.

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THE MOST O C E A N - F R I E N D LY N AT I O N

on Earth When it comes to marine conservation, we have a lot to learn from Palau's historical traditions.

However, implemented conservation strategies require all nations to commit to a more sustainable future, before it's too late.

Wo rd s a n d p h o t o g ra p h s b y H e n l e y S p i e r s

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P

alau draws you in with its classic, tropical good looks, but peek beneath that fine exterior, and you’ll find unusual traditions, forward-thinking marine policies, as well as a tumultuous, bloody history.

From an ocean-lovers standpoint, Palau merits our attention as a bucket-list destination, but also for the example it has set as arguably the most ocean-friendly nation of this millennia.

You would think that the isolation of this archipelago, far removed from anywhere else in the Pacific Ocean, would have resulted in a blissful and cinematic tribal existence. The truth, however, is this land has been fought over for centuries, valued as both a trading and military outpost. First claimed by the Spanish in the 16th century, they would lose so many priests on the journey to evangelise the region that they named it the ‘Enchanted Islands’. The Spanish then sold Palau to Germany after losing the Spanish – American war in 1898. The Germans' rule was short-lived but they left a lasting mark through the creation of an artificial pathway between the lagoon and ocean. Today, as nutrient-rich water flows through the German channel, it attracts reef mantas and has become one of Palau’s most famous dive sites. Japan was next, taking over the islands after Germany’s defeat in World War I. Fiercely contested during World War II, the United States would ultimately take control of Palau, until it declared sovereignty in 1994 (but still with a great deal of American influence and support).

My first immersion, at Jake Seaplane, the wreck of a World War II Japanese scouting plane, gives you a small sense of this conflict-ridden history. This plane actually survived the war and was later placed underwater for scuba divers, so the experience is enjoyable without the conflicted emotions of visiting a war grave. A manmade structure is then followed by an ocean-made one at Chandelier Cave. It looks like nothing from the surface, but as we dip below, the sea has carved out an opening in the limestone and we follow our guide into a large opening. We swim into the first of four impressive chambers, surfacing in each to appreciate the hanging stalactites, a chorus of gasps reverberating around as we are able to remove regulators in the large air pockets. All of this and we’ve barely left Koror, capital city and home to most of Palau’s small population of about 20,000.

In 2009, Palau made global headlines as it declared the world’s first shark sanctuary, banning all shark fishing within its entire Exclusive Economic Zone, a 600,000 sq km area (approximately the same size as France). This trailblazing action galvanised a number of other seafaring nations, including the Bahamas and Maldives, who followed suit with their own national shark sanctuaries.

A new dawn for shark PR entered the mainstream, with more people becoming aware of the threats faced by

“Marine conservation is steeped in the customs of Palau, going back thousands of years.”

these charismatic animals. Palau followed that up with the announcement in 2015 of a Marine Protected Area covering 80% of its waters. This huge, California-sized MPA took years of planning and officially came into effect at the start of 2020.

Diving in Palau is certainly a shark-heavy affair, one which could be described as unusual, or normal, depending on your point of view. It is a perfectly natural state of affairs for sharks to be present on reefs, at the top of the ecosystem, but finding them there has become rare in most locations, as an estimated annual global shark catch of 100 million eats away at their numbers. Here in Palau, grey reef sharks are the most commonly sighted on dives, with the classically pleasing shape of a requiem shark. Unlike the notion of sharks imparted by ‘Jaws’, these grey reefs are both cautious and timid, sticking together in a small group and rarely coming close to divers. This is problematic for underwater photography purposes, where shooting through more than a couple of metres of water quickly robs us of colour, contrast, and sharpness. I finally catch a break at Peleliu Cut, where after stalking a pack of mischievous sharks all dive, they wait for the moment I give up and turn back, before coming in for a closer investigation. Could it be that over their millions of years of evolution, sharks have developed a sense of humour?

It is blissful below the waterline, but once upon a time, the island of Peleliu was Hell on Earth. It was here where one of the deadliest battles of World War II occurred. A fight over an airstrip, which was supposed to take just three days, dragged on for two months as American forces encountered a radically altered Japanese defensive strategy. Thousands were wounded and killed, in a dreadful war of attrition. It remains one of the most controversial strategic decisions of the Pacific campaign, with the conquered airstrip proving to be of little strategic importance. Military historians defend it as a necessary lesson for the American command before the attacks on Iwo Jima and Okinawa (both of which have been documented by Hollywood).

Marine conservation is steeped in the customs of Palau, going back thousands of years. Through practice of bul, a council of chiefs would close off a section of the reef during fish spawning or feeding periods. This

PREVIOUS: A Napoleon wrasse digging for food leads to a feeding frenzy as red snapper and other reef fish follow it closely, hoping to pick up an easy meal.

THIS PAGE: Glass fish seem to be bursting from a red sea fan in this creative image, captured using a zoom blur technique.

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“The understanding and protection of fish spawning events formed part of the bul concept, and in recent years, divers have become attuned to the moments when certain species start to aggregate.�

Grey reef sharks at Peleliu Cut.

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“The enormous Marine Protected Zone declared by Palau is another positive step, but pessimists will point to the paucity of patrol boats at the country’s disposal. We do not live in a utopia, and conservation efforts will only work in the long-term if they are balanced with the economic and social needs of nations.”

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would allow that zone to replenish, and spill over into surrounding waters. It was an early example of a MPA, and a tradition that was sadly weakened with the passing of time, due to the influence of colonising countries.

The same principles that worked then, are needed today.

A 2017 study of MPAs in Palau, revealed that they held twice the biomass of resource fishes compared to nearby unprotected areas. The study concluded that the effectiveness of a no-take zone is mainly reliant on its size, and years of implementation.

The difference is perceptible when diving, where it seems like every site has a full collection of marine star attractions. In most other places I’ve visited, you will go to one site for the sharks, another for a school of jack, yet another for a school of barracuda… and that’s if you’re lucky. In Palau, almost every dive brings with it a full house: sharks, barracuda, jacks, Napoleon wrasse, and so on. It may not be the most scientific analysis, but it was certainly noticeable during our dives.

Blue Corner is the most famous site in Palau, swept by a bracing current – you hook in and watch a runway of the ocean’s finest. The back-story to the site bears repeating. Francis Toribiong was the pioneer of Palauan diving, establishing almost all dive sites. One day he was leading a group of Italian cameramen and they had just dived the nearby Blue Holes. They asked Francis if he knew of anywhere better, and after a pensive moment, he pointed to Blue Corner. Upon ascending from the dive, the Italians seemed upset. Francis enquired why and they replied that they were frustrated, as they had just experienced the best dive of their lives, and nowhere else would match it. Thus, Blue Corner was born and news of it would soon reach dive communities around the world.

The understanding and protection of fish spawning events formed part of the bul concept, and in recent years, divers have become attuned to the moments when certain species start to aggregate on the reefs.

With careful study of moon patterns, and a lot of trial and error, they have also figured out the exact moment spawning will commence. Early one morning, we witnessed thousands of bumphead parrotfish arriving for their appointment in the blue water beside the reef. The sheer mass of these large, beach-creating coral crunchers is awesome to behold. As the sexual tension rises, the faces of the bumpheads turn white, with a white band also appearing on their bodies. Males jostle one another in the search for a female, sometimes butting heads with a loud thump. When a male and female finally unite, they race up into the water column, with other competing males desperately trying to force their way into the embrace. Like a fishy firework, they explode in a mass of sperm and eggs at the top, before quickly dispersing back into the deeper water, ready to try again.

The action is fast and furious and at times you completely lose visibility, swimming through clouds of fertilised

eggs. The dominance of the females in this scenario shares parallels with ancient Palauan society, which was governed by a matriarchal system of clans. Another example of highly-evolved thinking, Palauan women had a far greater say in financial decisions than their counterparts in the Western world.

Changing ocean temperatures in 1998, 2010, and 2016, led to significant coral bleaching in Palau. Environmental events on this scale are driven by global climate change, beyond the control of national marine conservation policies, and an unusual drought in 2016 also led to the closing of the popular jellyfish lake tourist attraction on Eil Malk Island. Once home to many millions of jellyfish, today it has reopened but with only around one million jellyfish inhabitants. The lake was once connected to the ocean, but is now accessed by hiking up and over a ridge. The jellyfish have adapted to life in the lake, using photosynthesis to grow algae in their body, which is then consumed. Two types of jellyfish are present, the moon and golden, with the golden variety being more numerous. Although they have stinging cells, these are so weak that most people don’t react to them, leading to the jellyfish usually being described as stingless. The jellyfish have only one known predator in the lake, a white anemone that attaches to branches and roots on the fringes of the lake. As a result, the jellyfish try to avoid the anemones by sticking to the deeper areas, following the sun’s path en-masse. Swimming amongst this army of gelatinous bodies is otherworldly, another unforgettable aquatic experience in a country that thrives on them.

The jury is still out on shark sanctuaries. They certainly sound great, but definitions and regulations vary between each of the countries where they have been implemented.

The ban on almost all commercial fishing in Palau’s shark sanctuary marks it out as one of the leaders when it comes to deterring destructive shark fishing. Shark sanctuaries have certainly had a positive effect on tourism, which can be a force for protection, as well as awareness of the plight of sharks. However, the longer life cycle of sharks means it will likely take decades to truly understand if they have been successful in restoring shark populations.

The enormous Marine Protected Zone declared by Palau is another positive step, but pessimists will point to the paucity of patrol boats at the country’s disposal.

We do not live in a utopia, and conservation efforts will only work in the long-term if they are balanced with the economic and social needs of nations. Through its cultural traditions, and its present day policies, Palau has shown a determination to move towards a more sustainable future. These are lessons Palauans learnt a long time ago, but somewhere along the line they got lost in the drive for modernisation. Today, it’s time the rest of the world paid heed to the simple, yet effective lessons of the bul practice, a way of protecting marine resources not just in Palau, but in the entire global ocean.

TOP: Beautiful Palau, above the waterline.

BOTTOM: A green turtle glides above the deep ocean.

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EXP

Moalboal, Philippines

Philippines: World’s Leading Dive Destination (2019 & 2020 World Travel Awards)

#ItsMoreFunInThePhilippines

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