OCEAN PICTURES SERIES

We continue to kill in excess of 100 million sharks every year. 'We've systematically removed so many animals from the ocean through commercial industrialised overfishing. 'I could've never imagined I'd see the degree of degradation I've seen in these past four decades,' says the US photographer, filmmaker and National Geographic Fellow Brian Skerry, who's been exploring the oceans since the late 1970s.

OCEAN PICTURES SERIES

US photographer James Balog's Extreme Ice Survey, for example, a series of time-lapse cameras in Greenland, Iceland, Antarctica and other locations, has shown incontrovertible proof of the world's disappearing glaciers.Ĭlimate change is an all-encompassing issue, from floods and fires to desertification and drought, but oceans are of central importance. Photography plays a vital role in providing evidence of the changes happening on our planet. Despite the evidence and scientific consensus, there remains some resistance to the inconvenient truth that climate change is an issue at all, the waters deliberately muddied by vested interests. The term 'global warming' was popularised by the US scientist Wallace Broecker as far back as 1975. Climate photography's a process of finding those moments where people can reflect on the real consequences.' Perhaps that's why it's taken humanity so long to make bolder decisions to rethink our energy, development and sustainability models. 'Climate change is difficult to photograph because it's like a slow-moving tsunami,' says Mexican photographer Cristina Mittermeier. The climate clues hidden in art history The ancient origins of the colour green But how can an isolated fragment of time tell the story of this almost imperceptible process of incremental change? Antarctica loses around 130 gigatons of ice per year. Oceans' temperatures have risen in the last 50 years by around 0.5C, the rate of warming increasing. The Earth has warmed by more than 1C since the Industrial Revolution, the last decade the hottest on record. The camera I work with, for example, can capture one 8000th of a second, fast enough to show the wings of a hummingbird in sharp definition.īut how can you photograph something as slow as a vast ice sheet shrinking across the decades or the gradual warming of the oceans? Climate change and the connected biodiversity crisis present humans with an existential threat, the most challenging issue of our times. Often, photos represent less than a second of life on Earth. Whether it's war victims fleeing burning buildings, a World Cup-winning goal or a protestor smashing a window, images can be loaded with information that tells the story of a specific location and situation in a specific fragment of time. The simple act of opening and closing a camera shutter has the power to capture and preserve a moment.

Ocean pictures