Wildlife photographers turn their cameras toward conservation

“Politicians are afraid of these images,” said Cristina Mittermeier , a marine biologist and photographer.

Documenting peril

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In 2005 Mittermeier published an article in the International Journal of Wilderness arguing for the development of “conservation photography” — as opposed to wildlife photography — on the grounds that it would encourage changes in government policy. She recruited photographers to attend the World Wilderness Congress in Anchorage, where she helped start the International League of Conservation Photographers, a group that now boasts 104 fellows in 25 countries. Its goal: to document ecosystems in peril.

Technology has allowed these photographers to get closer to their subjects than ever before. They use devices such as infrared sensors and submersibles that can plunge to the ocean’s depths. And they take risks, flying on helicopters without doors, camping on freezing mountaintops, chatting up poachers and exposing themselves to an array of diseases.

“You do have to put yourself in harm’s way,” explained Skerry, who has begun a five-year project to chronicle New England’s ocean to press for more protective measures. “Many of us are invested in telling stories about the environment. But at the end of the day, we love the rush and love getting the pictures.”

Over his 35-year career, Skerry has experienced plenty of close calls. He has gotten momentarily lost under Arctic pack ice in water that was 28.5 degrees Fahrenheit. He has been grabbed by a Humboldt squid, an animal with 24,000 teeth on its arms, and chased by a sperm whale. His scariest moment came when a nine-foot saltwater crocodile came within three feet of him at the edge of a mangrove forest in Mexico, even as his assistant tried to fend off the animal with a PVC pipe.

“I knew I was being stalked and hunted,” Skerry says. “If he attacked, there wouldn’t be a way to get out quickly.” He extricated himself by backing up carefully so as not to disturb the silt in the water.

But Skerry, whose new book features a close-up of a tiger shark’s toothy jaws, said his photos underscore the fact that these animals “let us into their world. The message of that picture is he could have eaten me, but he didn’t.”

Skerry speaks publicly about the need to protect dwindling shark populations; he just won the Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Excellence in Media for his outreach efforts. His TED talk on “The Glory and Horror in the Sea” has attracted close to half a million views online.

Watching ice melt

Shrinking habitat, Mittermeier said, has forced photographers “to go to the furthermost reaches” of the planet to capture wilderness on film.

In 2006, James Balog, a scientist and nature photographer, came up with the idea of an Extreme Ice Survey that would capture the melting of glaciers across the Earth with time-lapse photography. He borrowed a neighbor’s eight-foot folding table to start building cameras that could function in sub-zero temperatures and withstand 150 mph winds for a year. He promised to return the table in two weeks; months later, he still had it.