Gathering of Unicorns

‘Unicorns of the sea’ is an appropriate epithet for the narwhals of Canada’s Arctic – not only do their enormous, spiraled tusks bear a resemblance to that of the mythical equines, but they are about as difficult to capture on film, especially so underwater. Sensitive and shy, narwhals will retreat the moment they detect a stranger’s presence in their home. Even the softest crunch of footsteps on the ice above or the gentlest ripple of a fin tip in the water will send them scurrying into the depths. For years, organizations like National Geographic and the BBC had sent photographers and filmmakers to document them, but most, myself included, would return home with little more than recollections of missed or distant encounters. After many trips and half a decade of trying, I finally found success.

In 2006, Jed Weingarten and I had been living on Nunavut’s sea ice for two and half months, desperately trying everything within our power to capture images of narwhals below the surface for a feature story in National Geographic Magazine. We had swum out into the open ocean multiple times, dropped remote cameras into the depths from the ice edge, and begun to lose hope when at last, we spotted a pod in the distance one calm, beautiful, glassy evening.

Quickly launching our small kayak, we paddled about three miles off the ice edge into the vast Arctic nothingness, the midnight sun just skimming along the horizon behind us. We slowed as we drew close to the pod, both holding our breath in awe as eight-, nine-, and ten-foot-long ivory tusks rose into the air before glancing off one another in a secret ritual performed by the dozens of males hidden below the surface. It is a behavior we have very little understanding of, although most believe it to be either a playful interaction or some pre-courtship formality. Either way, I pointed out a pair that looked particularly engrossed in one another, and we resumed our slow, cautious advance.

The duelling males were so utterly engrossed in one another that they didn’t even notice the strange pair of newcomers floating ever closer.

With an underwater camera housing secured, I lowered my torso into the water and peered through the viewfinder, Jed drawing slow circles with his paddle until I was within just two feet of this incredible display. He steadied us in the water, and I began to shoot what I already knew was one of the great encounters of my life. It is difficult to describe the overwhelming feeling I experienced when the far narwhal’s eight-foot-long ivory tooth reached around his partner and began to brush against my Neoprene-clad head.

To my knowledge, I am the only human ever to have been included in this mysterious performance, even if only mistakenly. There was nothing I could do except to keep shooting pictures.

Sadly, nothing lasts forever. The whale with its back to me suddenly dropped a few inches in the water, and I became exposed to his partner, who echolocated me with a single click. In a flash, they untangled themselves and disappeared from view into the inky darkness below. Jed cheered as I pulled my head from the water and lay breathless on the kayak, slowly recovering from the adrenaline rushing through my veins.

The memory remains very close to my heart – one of my deathbed experiences, or so I call them. As guilty as I felt for disturbing the narwhals, an image captured during the encounter ended up as the opening spread in our National Geographic article, helping to connect millions of people around the world to a precious species in dire need of conservation efforts. 

With gratitude,

Polar Wisdom

There are no guarantees in the world of assignment photography. Even a world-class publication like National Geographic can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars sending a team of carefully selected photographers to the farthest reaches of the planet, only to have them return empty-handed months later. It is certainly not for lack of passion, skill, or effort when this happens, as it often does. Sometimes, the moment you are chasing simply doesn’t appear.

I fail ninety-eight percent of the time when it comes to my wildlife photography, but I was fortunate never to have failed an assignment while shooting for the magazine. There were a number of times I came close – this is the story of one such occasion.

It was the summer of 2007. The National Geographic ship that runs weekly and bi-weekly tours around Svalbard, Norway, lowered my assistant, Shaun Powell, and me into a small Zodiac that sat heavy in the Arctic water. We had jammed it with as many supplies as we possibly could: two thousand pounds of camping and camera equipment, three drums of fuel, and rations from the ship’s kitchen, including a bottle of cheap scotch and half a carrot cake. Confident nothing more would fit, we hit the throttle – the bow of the boat rose into the air, and we were off.

A self-portrait of Shaun and I moving camp by the light of the midnight sun to accommodate for the tide – Arctic living at its finest.

I remember feeling like a hero as passengers on the top deck waved to us. Shaun and I waved enthusiastically back, right up until we collided with the small iceberg they had, in retrospect, clearly been trying to warn us of. Our egos took more damage than the Zodiac, thankfully, and we sheepishly resumed waving after getting back underway. For two months, we cruised the ice-filled ocean, pausing to take refuge in our tents only when neither of us could keep our eyes open any longer. The sky stays bright for a full twenty-four hours in the land of the midnight sun – we often worked all night and slept all day.

The first one, two, or three photographs you see when you flip to a featured article in National Geographic are what I call home-run images – big, beautiful, double-page spreads capable of transporting the reader through time and space. We had not hit any home runs on this trip, much less captured anything that would be usable by the magazine. Wildlife encounters were fleeting at best, and my memory cards slowly filled with generic images of guillemots, kittiwakes, icebergs, distant walruses, and an occasional bearded seal.

With our time running out, I was desperate to capture anything even resembling an iconic, powerful moment when one suddenly presented itself.

Despite our poor luck with local wildlife, there was no shortage of spectacular scenics to connect a global audience with the effects of climate change on the most fragile ecosystem on Earth.

Shaun and I rounded a corner in the Zodiac to discover perhaps the largest bear either of us had ever seen – a thick, healthy, stoic-looking male whose face bore the crisscrossed scars of challenges to his right to breed. He stared at us from behind the half-eaten carcass of a large, adult bearded seal, satiated and sluggish after consuming what we estimated to be at least a hundred and fifty pounds of fresh meat. I held my breath, raised my camera, and motioned for Shaun to nudge us closer to shore, but every time we approached, the bear would become obstructed by some outcrop of rock or pile of snow. He sat there patiently, never moving an inch, but after trying again and again, it became clear the distance between us was too great – only by leaving the security of the Zodiac and standing on land would I be able to get the shot I envisioned.

I am very proud never to have harmed a polar bear in self-defense, despite several thousand experiences with them during my forty years living and working in the Arctic.

Planning to give him control over the encounter, I mounted my camera on a tripod and began taking pictures. I moved slowly and cautiously, allowing him to see, smell, and hear me. I let him grow familiar with the shutter’s click as I worked. His appetite was astonishing – with nowhere left to put the seal meat, every other mouthful he forced down was vomited up moments later. He seemed determined to extract every calorie possible from what might have been his first full meal in weeks.

Other than watching me closely as he tore strips from the carcass, our encounter had been peaceful, and he had behaved exactly as most bears do, in my experience: calmly and naturally. Few things in life are more rewarding than leaving animals the way I found them, and I already had what I needed, so I said goodbye under my breath and slowly backed my way towards the boat.

National Geographic ultimately chose this photo, taken from the Zodiac, to include alongside the story.

Shaun and I celebrated as we zipped back to camp in the Zodiac, harsh Arctic wind stinging our smiling faces. Good fortune had stepped in when we needed it most, and my uncertainty traded places with confidence that I had images National Geographic would find fit to print at last. The scotch we had packed with us was cheap, but later that night, as we toasted our success back at camp, it tasted better than any I had sipped before.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me,

Suspended Grace

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, slowly counting to four in my head. After a brief pause, I counted out another eight and let my breath escape in a steady, controlled manner, consciously attempting to counteract the adrenaline pumping through my body and slow my racing pulse. Waiting thirty feet below me in the crystal blue waters of Dominica was an encounter I had been dreaming of for years. The excitement made it difficult to concentrate, but I needed to take full control of my respiration if I was to endure the extended free dive ahead. I continued breathing in slow, uninterrupted cycles for another two minutes until the calm I had been conjuring washed over me at last.

Confident my heart was beating slow enough, I inhaled one final time, packing my lungs with as much air as possible, spat out my snorkel, and began my descent, camera held in outstretched arms like a sword guiding me into the depths.

My career as a conservationist storyteller has helped me understand that people are more likely to care about the ocean if they first fall in love with the charismatic megafauna that call it home.

I arrived at the fifty-foot mark and slowly began an approach, doing my best to ignore the involuntary contractions of my diaphragm as my lungs begged me to rid them of CO₂ and take a breath. I took a photo, quickly reviewed it, then shifted my position in the water to try again. And again. And again. Once more, and everything started to come together – the ribbon-like squid tentacles, the sun-dappled ocean surface, the calf in the background, and her eye, closely watching this stranger to her world for signs of annoyance. Sperm whales have the largest brain of any species on the planet but only turn it off one half at a time while they sleep. She was fully aware of her surroundings but remained motionless, totally accepting my presence. It was the greatest gift she could have given me.

I grew more and more excited as this dream shot unfolded before my eyes, which increased my heart rate and triggered more aggressive diaphragm contractions in my chest. I was out of time.

Not wanting to startle them, I initiated a controlled ascent to the surface with minimal kicking. Despite feeling as though it had lasted forever, the entire encounter was over in less than ninety seconds.

Sowing the seeds for that relationship is my contribution, and I knew that giving them a glimpse into the soul of a proud matriarch would open their hearts to this mysterious world. My lungs burned as I reached the top of her head, but I continued down another twenty feet to get below her eye where I could photograph up towards the surface and capture her young calf in the background.

After my solo dive, Cristina and I revisited the sleeping whales together and captured an image for scale. It will be another decade before this mother whale and her calf part ways.

Cristina greeted me at the surface when I returned. She had been preparing to attempt a similar shot, but after taking a moment to recover, I asked if she would instead model for me to create a sense of scale. She agreed, and we cycled through a series of slow breaths together before heading back down. We made several dives over the next hour, throughout which the mother sperm whale, who had been named ‘Soursop’ by the crew of our vessel, remained perfectly still. It was as if she knew her cooperation would help our effort to protect her species and her home.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me,

error: Content is protected !!