FEATURES
Cristina Mittermeier is a world-renowned conservationist and award-winning photographer and documentarian. A marine biologist who has been working as a writer and photographer for the past 25 years, her work has been featured in hundreds of publications, including some of the world’s most prestigious journals – TIME, National Geographic, MacLean’s and The Atlantic, to name a few. Cristina has made it her life’s mission to highlight the spectacular beauty of the world’s natural environment, as well as the many grave challenges it faces, through her photography. 24
DIVERS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT | SEPTEMBER 2020
Her work bridges the gap between the efforts of countless scientists and conservationists the world over, and a public largely unaware of their monumental efforts to monitor, protect and conserve the planet’s delicate and complex ecosystem. A highly active conservationist, Cristina has participated in many international environmental programmes the world over, and co-founded several organisations of her own, including the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) in 2005, the non-profit organisation SeaLegacy in 2014,
and a first-of-its-kind ocean conservation action platform called Only One launched earlier this year. THE POWER OF AN IMAGE Cristina and her partner, renowned National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen, captured the world’s attention in 2017 when they released images and footage of an exhausted and emaciated polar bear struggling to survive in an Arctic environment almost completely devoid of sea ice. When Paul posted the footage on social media, he added the caption, “This is what starvation looks like.”
