Underwater Photography and Marine Biology

Dr Richard Smith · Issue 124, Jan/Feb 2022 · pp. 44–46

I began exploring the aquatic realm at sixteen, learning to dive with my father in a frigid British quarry in November with a thick frost on the ground – I saw one crayfish during four dives, but thankfully I persevered. Since then, my journey as a marine biologist and underwater photographer has given me a huge amount of insight about the many overlooked creatures of coral reefs, culminating in my book The World Beneath. Some of the earliest images I captured were taken in the Maldives during the first global coral bleaching event that devastated many of the Indian Ocean’s reefs. Although these images were decidedly average, the subject matter led to a fundamental shift in my consciousness and my aspirations of becoming a terrestrial zoologist plunged beneath the waves. I soon became interested in macro underwater photography, through trying to identify nudibranchs (sea slugs). The litt…