Contributed by expedition photographer Brian Skerry

I have spent the last three days living a boyhood dream--exploring the ocean in a submersible. I have been SCUBA diving for over thirty years and taking pictures underwater for nearly as long, but I have never been inside a true submersible until now. It is everything I thought it would be and more!

This trip is the beginning of the Seamounts story that Greg Stone and I are producing for National Geographic Magazine. My goal as the story photographer is to produce images of seamounts that illustrate the immense value these places have as biodiversity hotspots in the sea; some of the last remaining hotspots in our world's oceans.

The seamount we've been exploring here in the Sea of Cortez is El Bajo, once a lush and wild place, famous for massive schools of hammerhead sharks and a wealth of other marine life. Today however, it is a shadow of its former self due to decades of over fishing. I had hoped that with the deep submersible dives we would find that the devastation was limited to only shallow waters, but it does not appear to be the case.

While we have seen some beautiful animals, there are very few and the evidence of destruction is clearly present. I have shifted my photographic focus to using El Bajo as an example of what can go wrong without protection of these jewels of the sea. I have been photographing lost fishing gear, especially massive fishing nets that have been lost on the bottom here. These trawler and seiner nets are draped over the reef and boulders of the seamount, a testimony to the severe pressure this site has received over the years.

I have been shooting with a newly designed deep-sea camera system developed by National Geographic Magazine for this project. With the superb maneuvering by the sub pilots I have been able to get very close to my subjects and make pictures. I've also made a few dives and made pictures the old fashioned way too--with a camera and underwater housing.


Brian Skerry (right) emerges from the DEEPSEE submarine after a dive.
In the photo above left Skerry photographs the ship for National Geographic story about the expedition.

Diving in the sub is fantastic! Just the sensation of slowly descending below the waves, then seeing the colors of blue morph into darker shades, then into shades of green is mesmerizing. I find that I have to shake myself out of a sleepy trance-like feeling and concentrate on the job at hand. It feels strange to me, seeing fish and gliding over rocks without being wet.

Although this component is short, only four days, it has already been extremely valuable from several perspectives, especially in regards to the learning curve of such a complex project. The next trip for this project/story will show the other side, the magnificent wildlife that live around seamounts and will explore places never been seen. I simply cannot wait!

-Brian Skerry

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Labels: biodiversity, Brian Skerry, El Bajo Seamount, overfishing

I had my first dive at El Bajo yesterday in DEEPSEE and what a dive it was. Brian Skerry, Avi Klapfer (the pilot) and I drifted down the south side of the seamount at 4:00 p.m., my favorite time of day in the ocean. Ocean life tends to come alive late in the day as the sun goes down. And DEEPSEE gives you a totally immersive view of the ocean through the plexiglas bubble.


Preparing for a submarine dive

First we drifted down to the summit of the seamount while filmmaker Adam Geiger SCUBA dived around the sub and filmed us. Then we headed into deeper water and saw schools of red fish, amber jacks, garden eels poking their serpent like necks from the sand and peering at us and finally we came upon a sad surprise. It was a giant "ghost net" wrapped around a rock, an old seine net. This was a reminder to us of why this seamount, while beautiful in its own way now, does not have the abundance of marine life that it once had.

Back in the 1980s, there was a time when hundreds of hammerhead sharks, dozens of manta rays and other large fishes swam and circled El Bajo. We spent a long time filming the net and Brian made photographs for our National Geographic magazine article. Avi expertly maneuvered the sub in away that amazed me. A six ton vehicle and he could slide it sideways, up and down to a tolerance of a 1/4 inch.

After leaving the net we continued on and were soon surrounded by spawning fish. Male and female fish swimming in tight circles and ejecting sperm and egg into the water column, hopefully a sign that this area is recovery from overfishing.


Brian Skerry, Avi Klapfer and Greg Stone

As we neared the end of our dive we saw one more encouraging sign that was a 12 foot hammerhead shark that swam by the bubble of our sub and off into the abyss.

This, for me, was a perfect, day.

-Gregory Stone

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Labels: El Bajo Seamount, Greg Stone, Manta Ray, overfishing