“Jennifer Hayes and I – my partner and my wife, she’s a marine biologist, photojournalist and writer – we did a story in the Okavango Delta, which ends up in the north-west corner of Botswana and creates this immense delta, which is of course a terrific oasis of life where there is no life around. It’s one of the most wondrous concentrations of life in Africa.
“Underwater, it’s like a garden full of strange and wondrous creatures. But there’s also actually two problems, which is why it’s not a great diving paradise. One of them is hippos, and hippos kill a lot of people in Africa. Mothers with babies are exceptionally dangerous. The other much large problem is the Nile crocodile. It’s large and incredibly dangerous. They’re as aggressive if not more so than the saltwater crocodile in Australia.
“So we’re diving every day in these waters. The good thing is we’re going in the winter, when they’re not quite as active – at least that’s the theory. And the second thing is, when the water is clearest, they’re not as active. We also never dove in the same place twice, because they would hear us working, and the next day they would gather and wait for us, being terrific ambush predators.
“We questioned our sanity because we had to photograph a lot of the creatures in the night, which is really scary. You would shine a spotlight from a boat and see the eyes of the crocodiles, which were like glowing coals, and when you got in the water and those glowing coals got closer and closer to you, it was time to get out.
“It was so gentle and beautiful there – and as you’re going down the path you have to watch out for snakes – but it was tremendously beautiful and exciting. We did a lot of things at night that ever since no-one has ever done. We never had a choice. We had to get these fish.”
Doubilet hints that all underwater photographers are, in a de facto way, documenting a time and a place that may soon degrade into nothingness, and I question whether one day his photos won’t be seen in nature books, but rather in history books.
“Some of the pictures we will show in Melbourne, we were lucky working on a story in the Great Barrier Reef which was published in 2012, and the story was based on the fact that a lot of this reef is going to disappear or change because of global climate change and because of ocean acidification. This is according to Dr Charles Veron, one of the world’s leading coral biologists. Because the ocean chemistry is so changed because of the enormous amounts of CO2 we put in the ocean, it makes it impossible for the tiny little polyp to build its carbonate house. In 30 years, not 50 or 100, we might not know the reef as we know it now.
“This is the reef, here is this nation offshore, and the interesting thing about the Great Barrier Reef and why it’s such an iconic reef among the world’s reefs, is that it’s one of the few reefs that are part of the territory of basically a richer country. A country that can afford to look after it and protect it and be aware of its significance. Unlike other reefs, you can’t get in the water and swim out to it.”
Doubilet is particularly fond of the GBR not just because of its beauty, but also because of a heart-stopping encounter he once had with the ocean’s most feared predator.
“We were working on this story and we had a call that said, ‘You know there’s a sperm whale carcass that has drifted onto the reef? It’s one of the first times in 20 years this has happened. Tiger sharks are feeding on it. You better go find it.’
“When we did find it, the tiger sharks had eaten almost all of the whale and the only things left were this great heart and lung and backbone area of the central part of the whale. They were feasting on it.
“We look at each other, Jennifer and I, and we have to make a decision: get in the water or don’t get in the water. So we jump in the water…and as the sun went down, more sharks showed up, and then suddenly you realise, in these situations, that the whole pulse of this feeding situation is increasing and increasing and then it’s time to get out of the water. We suddenly realise that sitting in this rubber boat isn’t the greatest place to be with now seven or eight really big tiger sharks feeding on the whale. This is part of the reef system just south of Port Douglas. That was an exciting moment,” he laughs.
Out of all the lively splendour he’s photographed, it was remarkable to learn where Doubilet has found the most peculiar and beautiful creature he’s ever seen.
“You Melburnians, you people of the southern Australian coast, are the proprietors of the one of the most wondrous – there’s no the because you keep finding something new and more extraordinary – but I would say some of the most wondrous things I’ve ever seen are relatives of the seahorse that live under the Portsea Pier in Melbourne: leafy seadragon and the weedy seadragon – two relatives of seahorses that go far beyond what the seahorse could ever be.
“The weedy seadragon’s found in Tasmania, and along the southern Australian coast, and the leafy seadragon is found from Melbourne, probably all the way to Perth and that’s it. They are the grandest and most baroque designs of nature. So there you are, top of the line and in your frontyard.”
And how would David Doubilet, the legendary photographer who has traversed the entire world to reveal what lurks beneath, and even had two of his photos sent into deep space as part of Voyager, describe his life in one word?
“Joy,” he responds. “Jennifer and I always agree on this: one of the greatest of all human attributes, and this what my father told me and her parents told her, is an unending curiosity. The greatest human attribute is kindest, but this is the second one. This is our planet. I’ve spent a lifetime peeling back layers of it, Jennifer too, both in science and photography, little by little, in tiny increments to understand. This is a time we have to preserve it, but also understand, but above, above all, appreciate it.”
BY NICK TARAS
