Brian Skerry Quotes

#1. Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator-prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines.

Brian Skerry

#2. As a young boy, I was very interested - as I still am - in all sorts of adventure and exploration. I thought about being an astronaut, a dinosaur scientist, or marine biologist, but I clearly was drawn to the ocean and to the water.

Brian Skerry

#3. All in all, the dives I made in Fiordland were some of the best I've ever made.

Brian Skerry

#4. For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.

Brian Skerry

#5. I typically shoot underwater with my regular camera in an underwater housing, and then I usually have two big strobes that I use to light. But with whales, you're not going to be able to really light a 45-foot subject. Your strobes are only effective for maybe five or six feet underwater.

Brian Skerry

#6. I've been diving for about 30 years, and I can honestly say that I've had some amazing encounters with sharks, squids, and other whales. But the encounter with the right whales in the Auckland Islands was probably the best thing I've ever done. It was just that amazing.

Brian Skerry

#7. I finally became a scuba diver at age 15 or so, and a couple of years after that, I attended a dive show that is held every year in Boston. It's the oldest one in the world and it's still going on - it's called the Sea Rovers.

Brian Skerry

#8. The Oceanic White Tip is considered one of the most dangerous sharks in the sea along with the Great White and Tiger. It is responsible for some of the most famous episodes of man-eating in history, such as when the U.S.S. Indianapolis sank in 1945.

Brian Skerry

#9. I flipped through a book on harp seals in the late 1970s and saw images of them swimming in emerald green pools of water surrounded by huge sheets of ice. Right then I was hooked, and I knew this was a story I wanted to do.

Brian Skerry

#10. Last year the [harp seal] pup mortality rate was 100 percent in parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Brian Skerry

#11. The Internet and my web site have grown to become essential components of my business. The expertise and support that LuxSci continually delivers is crucial to maintaining the worldwide contact I need to succeed. LuxSci provides peace of mind!

Brian Skerry

#12. I still think there's a big part of the population that has a lot of misinformation about sharks. But I think it's beginning to change a little bit. As good information about sharks permeates popular culture, things may start to change.

Brian Skerry

#13. Kneeling on the sea bottom in a place known as Tiger Beach, I watched a 12-foot- long female tiger shark cruise over the turtle grass with three silver bar jacks swimming in front of her nose.

Brian Skerry

#14. I have photographed sharks in waters around the globe, and I always want more and yearn to peer deeper into their world. To feed my passion and to raise awareness, I developed a story about sharks for 'National Geographic' magazine.

Brian Skerry

#15. The bohar snapper - they have these huge canines. I got bit by one. One took a chunk out of my ear - they are much scarier than the sharks.

Brian Skerry

#16. I think that most people would associate big schools of fish with healthy coral reefs. At Kingman, the predators keep the herd thin, so there aren't a lot of big fish schools.

Brian Skerry

#17. New England waters are some of my favorite - they are some of the richest waters because they are temperate waters and nutrient-rich, and therefore provide food for so many animals, from giant whales to sharks to everything else.

Brian Skerry

#18. I was the first journalist allowed on a hunting boat during harp seal season in almost 15 years. Around the late 1970s, white coat pups became the poster child for the anti-fur movement, and by the '80s, the media was lambasting the hunters for killing them.

Brian Skerry

#19. The Bahamas has mangrove nurseries, coral reefs, shallow sea grass beds, and deep oceanic trenches - all perfect ecosystems for sharks. Photographing multiple shark species in exquisite water was the assignment I had dreamed about from the start.

Brian Skerry

#20. I think that going to the beach as a child, being in the water and smelling that salt air and hearing the seagulls, it had a real calming effect. But also, it was a mysterious thing - I remember wondering what was under those dark New England seas.

Brian Skerry

#21. Since the majority of the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean, not to mention much of the world's protein, it is not an exaggeration to say that when our oceans' health declines, our very survival is at risk.

Brian Skerry

#22. Most whale photos you see show whales in this beautiful blue water - it's almost like space.

Brian Skerry

#23. I have been blessed to realize my dream of becoming an underwater photojournalist, but with that, I feel an obligation and sense of urgency to share what I have seen with others.

Brian Skerry

#24. Photography can be a powerful instrument for change, and photojournalists can tell stories that make a difference.

Brian Skerry

#25. There's still a lot of people out there who think the only good shark is a dead shark.

Brian Skerry

#26. I love storytelling, I love being a visual person, and it just made perfect sense to be an underwater photographer and explore the ocean and work with scientists.

Brian Skerry

#27. For where Kingman is located, the coral cover is unique in the world. I refer to it as a universe of hard corals. You are not going to find soft corals like in the western Pacific - places like Indonesia, Palau, or Fiji.

Brian Skerry