ALTHOUGH SKERRY WANTS PEOPLE TO SHARE IN THE WONDER AND BEAUTY HE FINDS BENEATH THE WAVES, HE ALSO
wants them to be deeply troubled by how fragile the ocean ecosystem has become. While documenting the global fishing crisis for National Geographic, he photographed giant bluefin tuna—a species he calls “the thoroughbreds of the ocean” for their awesome speed and power—stacked up like cordwood on Tokyo fishing piers. That cover story came with a price: Skerry grew physically depressed by what he’d seen. He’s photographed sharks off Cape Cod, in the Bahamas, and in the Pacific, and while that work led to his book Shark, every frame he shot came with the knowledge that 100 million sharks are killed each year, many for their fins alone. But he also explores ecosystems that are all but untouched by man, and when he shows people those photos of surreal beauty—from, say, a remote ocean preserve in New Zealand, or Kingman Reef in the Central Pacific, “a diver’s holy grail”—he hopes they embrace the idea that even as we have damaged the sea, so too can we restore it. “I want my grandkids to have healthy oceans,” he says. MARCH | APRIL 2021
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