most people when you say Arabia they
think camels terrorism pirates oil and
gas they don’t think coral reefs or
sharks so I proposed a story to National
Geographic magazine to kind of change
that you know cause Arabia you know is
home to some of the most incredible
marine ecosystems on our planet you know
fortunately the story was approved and
off I went you know at the same time as
the Arab Spring that was going on so my
timing on these stories is not ideal but
nonetheless you know the Arabian
Peninsula and we covered parts of the
African coast as well the Red Sea the
Gulf of Aden the Arabian Sea and then
the Persian Gulf began in the Gulf of
Aden on the Somali Djibouti border
sandwiched between pirates and the
Western naval forces hunting the Pirates
there is an aggregation of whale sharks
which nobody knows about and every year
is young juvenile whale sharks aggregate
to feed whale sharks have fingerprints
just like us and you can identify them
by looking at the spot pattern on them
and each whale shark is completely
unique with the spot patterns so after a
week or two I think there was almost
more than a hundred different whale
sharks feeding in that larger area the
biggest danger for a photographer here
is becoming a whale shark sandwich and
then you get this sort of you know these
guys actually suck the water in it’s
incredible you know stationary feeding
gulping behavior I also spend a lot of
time with the local Somali and fre
fishermen because I wanted to document
their relationship with the ocean I
spent many nights out at sea with them
and then one night after midnight they
go hey you know we sometimes have lots
of well sharks around our boat at night
and I go where sharks don’t feed at
night they go yes they do these guys
have these sort of lights on their boats
and with those lights they attract more
small plankton which attracts baitfish
and they catch these bait fish with nets
and then they use the bait to catch on a
hook to catch larger fish and the whale
sharks love the free meal of plankton
and they rub up against the boats and
I’m going I have to take this picture no
one had actually documented this before
so I go in the water and I’m using my
flashes and they ruin the complete
nighttime ambien
and the whale sharks don’t like him and
then I shoot without them but the lights
on these boats are just way way too dim
you know luckily I come prepared and you
know at night you know we parked the big
boat next to the small fishing boats and
we turn on the light and the light
attracts little plankton which attracts
big plankton which attracts little fish
which attracts bigger fish and then
after an hour – it attracted the world’s
biggest fish it’s kind of weird because
it’s hard to you know get a perspective
of size with whale sharks but these are
actually juveniles this is an
aggregation of sub adults now at first I
was disappointed out of just small whale
sharks just a hundred of them that sucks
I wish they were bigger when I was
taking the images having them small like
she made all the difference because you
know you’re underwater all you have is
this very thin cone of light and you’re
in the dark and all you can see is these
whale sharks moving in and out of the
light like ships you know looming in and
out of the fog and then you get pictures
like this you know just kind of just
coming out of the gloom but I really
wanted a picture of the whale shark more
interacting with the light I did this
for day after day and at the end I got
this frame you know the whale shark was
vertically suction feeding for about a
half an hour in that position so this
was you know anybody could have taken
that picture cuz he stood there for that
long not much you point and shoot not
much skill and there but with a larger
whale shark I would have gotten a fin or
half a head so it’s only because these
guys are juveniles that is the only
reason I was able to get this picture
you know from the Gulf of Aden Saudi
Arabia you know my interest was mainly
up on the Iraq Iran Kuwait border my
mother despairs
every time she finds that where my next
assignment is and of course you know
armed guards wherever I went you know
and this is a world of mud mud mud and
more mud and we have to use a hovercraft
starwars right I mean come on in a
hovercraft it was just like crazy and
why did I go there well I wanted to
photograph the animal that made these
now these are very very tiny mud walls
but in a desert environment like this
they’re lifesavers because basically
they retain water and the animal that
made them are mudskippers not your a
normal garden variety mudskipper arabian
mud skippers
that big and this thick and they do
these incredible courtship displays they
leap as high as they can whichever male
leaves the highest gets the female I
think they also have these cool fighting
displays they they puff each other up
and they raise the dorsal and just stare
at each other and then they do all these
sort of you know for these pictures you
lie in the mud for an hour before these
fish come out of the hole so you are
stationary for days to get you know
these little glimpses but yeah I love
these guys like oh here I’m screaming
right that’s my female not skipper or
whatever yeah let’s move on you know I
moved on to Turtles and on the Arabian
Sea and as I was shooting all this great
biodiversity I’m going hang on I’m not
seeing any sharks after the whale sharks
I hadn’t seen a single other shocking
one what’s going on here and I figured
it out when I was you know in Oman
photographing seasonal kelp forest
communities at Salalah and one evening I
was in this little place called Mira but
it’s this place that kind of time forgot
it’s this sort of old-school Arab
fishing village and there’s this wall of
people at the port and I kind of you
know gently elbow my way through it you
know and as the crowd parts I see this
this is about 93 silky sharks this is
one boat slow in every hour another boat
arrives and offloads exactly the same
number of sharks so the one night I was
there I think I must be in a thousand
silky sharks and then they auction
everything off and then at the end of
the auction all the Sharks are loaded
into these freezer trucks and they’re
taken away and I wanted to know where so
I started following these trucks I ended
up in these ice houses now these trucks
are not freezer trucks they’re insulated
but they’re badly insulated so every you
know a few hundred kilometers they have
to restart with ice and that’s where
they kind of you know barter the Sharks
and we sell them and there I found out
that an actual fact all these sharks are
going to Dubai so I went to Dubai and
there I saw you know a dozens of Amani
trucks offloading large Arabian Sea
sharks and you know fins are only cut
off there and the meat goes to
Bangladesh it goes to Pakistan it goes
to Sri Lanka for consumption it’s the
cheapest sort of mean protein there is
and the fins are export to Asia for
Royal sounds and princely sums and it
appears that over the last couple of
years Dubai has become the fourth
largest exporter of shark fins to Hong
Kong
the world and that is you know had
really sort of bypassed most of the
scientific literature and I’d reviewed
so this was a massive surprise to
actually able to document this trade
route across the Great Arabian desert
and you know went to Hong Kong
afterwards and I tried to track these
fins all the way to Hong Kong there’s a
street in Hong Kong and basically is
dedicated only to shark fin and dried
seafood I think it’s a hundred and forty
different shops you know shark fin City
and that’s where I felt my sharp snout
dried in the shops you know the article
was published 2012 a lot of conservation
issues were addressed in it and you know
it kind of really began a conversation
in the Middle East as well about how to
better manage when the shark fisheries
you
think camels terrorism pirates oil and
gas they don’t think coral reefs or
sharks so I proposed a story to National
Geographic magazine to kind of change
that you know cause Arabia you know is
home to some of the most incredible
marine ecosystems on our planet you know
fortunately the story was approved and
off I went you know at the same time as
the Arab Spring that was going on so my
timing on these stories is not ideal but
nonetheless you know the Arabian
Peninsula and we covered parts of the
African coast as well the Red Sea the
Gulf of Aden the Arabian Sea and then
the Persian Gulf began in the Gulf of
Aden on the Somali Djibouti border
sandwiched between pirates and the
Western naval forces hunting the Pirates
there is an aggregation of whale sharks
which nobody knows about and every year
is young juvenile whale sharks aggregate
to feed whale sharks have fingerprints
just like us and you can identify them
by looking at the spot pattern on them
and each whale shark is completely
unique with the spot patterns so after a
week or two I think there was almost
more than a hundred different whale
sharks feeding in that larger area the
biggest danger for a photographer here
is becoming a whale shark sandwich and
then you get this sort of you know these
guys actually suck the water in it’s
incredible you know stationary feeding
gulping behavior I also spend a lot of
time with the local Somali and fre
fishermen because I wanted to document
their relationship with the ocean I
spent many nights out at sea with them
and then one night after midnight they
go hey you know we sometimes have lots
of well sharks around our boat at night
and I go where sharks don’t feed at
night they go yes they do these guys
have these sort of lights on their boats
and with those lights they attract more
small plankton which attracts baitfish
and they catch these bait fish with nets
and then they use the bait to catch on a
hook to catch larger fish and the whale
sharks love the free meal of plankton
and they rub up against the boats and
I’m going I have to take this picture no
one had actually documented this before
so I go in the water and I’m using my
flashes and they ruin the complete
nighttime ambien
and the whale sharks don’t like him and
then I shoot without them but the lights
on these boats are just way way too dim
you know luckily I come prepared and you
know at night you know we parked the big
boat next to the small fishing boats and
we turn on the light and the light
attracts little plankton which attracts
big plankton which attracts little fish
which attracts bigger fish and then
after an hour – it attracted the world’s
biggest fish it’s kind of weird because
it’s hard to you know get a perspective
of size with whale sharks but these are
actually juveniles this is an
aggregation of sub adults now at first I
was disappointed out of just small whale
sharks just a hundred of them that sucks
I wish they were bigger when I was
taking the images having them small like
she made all the difference because you
know you’re underwater all you have is
this very thin cone of light and you’re
in the dark and all you can see is these
whale sharks moving in and out of the
light like ships you know looming in and
out of the fog and then you get pictures
like this you know just kind of just
coming out of the gloom but I really
wanted a picture of the whale shark more
interacting with the light I did this
for day after day and at the end I got
this frame you know the whale shark was
vertically suction feeding for about a
half an hour in that position so this
was you know anybody could have taken
that picture cuz he stood there for that
long not much you point and shoot not
much skill and there but with a larger
whale shark I would have gotten a fin or
half a head so it’s only because these
guys are juveniles that is the only
reason I was able to get this picture
you know from the Gulf of Aden Saudi
Arabia you know my interest was mainly
up on the Iraq Iran Kuwait border my
mother despairs
every time she finds that where my next
assignment is and of course you know
armed guards wherever I went you know
and this is a world of mud mud mud and
more mud and we have to use a hovercraft
starwars right I mean come on in a
hovercraft it was just like crazy and
why did I go there well I wanted to
photograph the animal that made these
now these are very very tiny mud walls
but in a desert environment like this
they’re lifesavers because basically
they retain water and the animal that
made them are mudskippers not your a
normal garden variety mudskipper arabian
mud skippers
that big and this thick and they do
these incredible courtship displays they
leap as high as they can whichever male
leaves the highest gets the female I
think they also have these cool fighting
displays they they puff each other up
and they raise the dorsal and just stare
at each other and then they do all these
sort of you know for these pictures you
lie in the mud for an hour before these
fish come out of the hole so you are
stationary for days to get you know
these little glimpses but yeah I love
these guys like oh here I’m screaming
right that’s my female not skipper or
whatever yeah let’s move on you know I
moved on to Turtles and on the Arabian
Sea and as I was shooting all this great
biodiversity I’m going hang on I’m not
seeing any sharks after the whale sharks
I hadn’t seen a single other shocking
one what’s going on here and I figured
it out when I was you know in Oman
photographing seasonal kelp forest
communities at Salalah and one evening I
was in this little place called Mira but
it’s this place that kind of time forgot
it’s this sort of old-school Arab
fishing village and there’s this wall of
people at the port and I kind of you
know gently elbow my way through it you
know and as the crowd parts I see this
this is about 93 silky sharks this is
one boat slow in every hour another boat
arrives and offloads exactly the same
number of sharks so the one night I was
there I think I must be in a thousand
silky sharks and then they auction
everything off and then at the end of
the auction all the Sharks are loaded
into these freezer trucks and they’re
taken away and I wanted to know where so
I started following these trucks I ended
up in these ice houses now these trucks
are not freezer trucks they’re insulated
but they’re badly insulated so every you
know a few hundred kilometers they have
to restart with ice and that’s where
they kind of you know barter the Sharks
and we sell them and there I found out
that an actual fact all these sharks are
going to Dubai so I went to Dubai and
there I saw you know a dozens of Amani
trucks offloading large Arabian Sea
sharks and you know fins are only cut
off there and the meat goes to
Bangladesh it goes to Pakistan it goes
to Sri Lanka for consumption it’s the
cheapest sort of mean protein there is
and the fins are export to Asia for
Royal sounds and princely sums and it
appears that over the last couple of
years Dubai has become the fourth
largest exporter of shark fins to Hong
Kong
the world and that is you know had
really sort of bypassed most of the
scientific literature and I’d reviewed
so this was a massive surprise to
actually able to document this trade
route across the Great Arabian desert
and you know went to Hong Kong
afterwards and I tried to track these
fins all the way to Hong Kong there’s a
street in Hong Kong and basically is
dedicated only to shark fin and dried
seafood I think it’s a hundred and forty
different shops you know shark fin City
and that’s where I felt my sharp snout
dried in the shops you know the article
was published 2012 a lot of conservation
issues were addressed in it and you know
it kind of really began a conversation
in the Middle East as well about how to
better manage when the shark fisheries
you
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