Silent Streams | National Geographic

that’s a rhymin snake neck turtle okay
of all the pictures in my coverage for
silent streams this picture of the ryman
Snaith neck turtle has the most
resonance with people because the turtle
looks like it’s smiling and it looks
cute and that gets people attached so
that’s that’s great my big job is to get
people to care not only about something
that looks cute and smiling at them but
something Doug even have eyes like clams
it’s very very difficult though to make
a sexy grabby picture of a clan minnows
I mean minnows most people think of them
as bait but there there’s a lot of
variety there they’re very interesting
their behaviors are very interesting and
a lot of Mahrt risk we’re totally
disconnected now from the natural world
I mean my own children are are scared to
be more than 10 feet away from an
electrical outlet you know they have to
have glowing screens all the time and
I’m talking about kids that are are
related to me I mean I’m their dad and
I’m teaching them about how wonderful
nature is but I have a very hard time
getting them off the couch and doing
this it’s very it’s a dilemma I don’t
know how to how to solve it either I’m
really really interested in the things
that have very few specimens left on
earth I mean the rare they are the more
I’m interested a lot of the plants and
animals that I photograph there’s no
other national media attention ever on
that end it’s just too obscure people
can’t figure out what good it is and so
the picture that I have run in National
Geographic maybe 30 million people will
see it maybe more that’s its only chance
and I want to tell the story of these
animals and plants that are so
critically endangered that if we don’t
do something now they will vanish from
the face of the earth forever I mean I’m
really on mission that’s my reason for
being is to get people to say holy cow I
didn’t know that existed that is so cool
what are we doing about that we can’t
let that go extinct
not let that happen