♪ (soaring string music) ♪
♪ (ambient music) ♪
David Doubilet: Unseen,
unknown, mysterious.
Beautiful and existence,
city in the sea.
The richest part of our planet.
It was paradise.
(applause)
Good evening!
What we want to show tonight
is basically a year.
A year in photography.
And we will take
you on a journey,
mostly under seas,
from the boiling hot tropics,
the volcano-laced tropics,
to the cold water, to the ice,
to the arctic.
And I think I may share
a little bit about us.
We work as a team.
We're together 24/ 7,
which is--
We are married, you know.
Yes, we are married.
But it's a good partnership.
Jennifer has always said
that I have this teenage crush
about Papua New Guinea.
But 18 years ago,
it's now 18 years ago,
I was in a place
called Kimbe Bay,
I was there for the
total of six days.
And in those six days I made
some very serious,
wonderful pictures.
And I had to go back,
I had to go back.
But the years passed
and suddenly...
The phone
rang and it was...
It was the office
and they said to me,
"You. You have been selected
to participate, to contribute
in the 125th anniversary issue,
David: the photography issue
of the National
 Geographic magazine ."
They said, "You can
go anywhere you want,
shoot anything you want."
And I said to myself,
"Kimbe Bay," ding!
And so we had an assignment.
But here's a problem that
all of you share right now
and that problem is 'Where
the hell is Kimbe Bay?'
(audience laughter)
David: Well, Kimbe Bay is in
the Coral Triangle.
And the Coral Triangle
is where, on this planet,
the most bio-diverse,
the most numbers
of fish, coral and of
course, invertebrates live.
This was a perfect assignment.
What could possibly go wrong?
Hmm.
The whole story's
had a cloud over it.
Boiling dark cloud.
The monsoon is still going on.
The wettest March
and April since 1970.
The batteries are smoldering,
stinking and burning.
Your camera's on fire.
It nearly burnt the place down.
Strobes flood.
A GoPro floods.
Gone.
We lose another light.
The electronics are scrambled.
Torrential rains.
And kaboom!
Another $3,000.
Charger blows up.
Like this place
has it in for us.
Mosquitoes are buzzing
around our heads.
You don't have to
worry about the bends,
you have malaria.
And as of two days
ago, a cyclone.
Guinea is eating us
up and spit us out.
And this story was
supposed to be a gift,
an easy, beautiful story.
Funny, all these years,
all these stories,
every place we've
gone to we're sort of
reluctant to leave.
But it's over now.
So say goodnight Buffalo Bob.
Goodnight Buffalo Bob.
Well, the one sunny day.
David: This is what this place
looked like.
It's an absolute paradise.
Deep water with these
wonderful sea mounds
rising from thousands of
feet, almost to the surface,
and surrounded by volcanoes.
And here's this mysterious lake
called Dok Toek,
the forbidden lake.
No foreigners,
nobody but tribesmen
can go to this lake because
it's full of spirits
and crocodiles.
The offshore reefs, like
this incredible place
called Kimbe Bomi and
they were far offshore,
two and a half hour
boat rides every day.
Hundred and twenty-five feet
down at the top of the reef.
They were like absolute gardens,
these deep,
underwater volcanoes.
♪ (melodic music) ♪
David: Bradford is the most
spectacular dive here.
There's a sea mount
called Bradford Shoals.
It rises up from the deep,
it is rounded, steep-shouldered
and has an immense school
of chevron barracuda,
which swim around
in great circles,
almost making
funnel-shaped clouds.
Around they go,
spooling upwards.
When fish move in
a circular pattern,
they create the
rarest thing in the sea
which is a geometric pattern,
a place that has no
corners, no edges.
Geometry in a place
of weightless chaos.
♪ (melodic music continues) ♪
And then the barracudas
would form these immense,
circular tornado-shaped towers,
David: going from basically
the bottom of the reef
all the way to the surface,
sometimes 70, 80 feet high.
Look at this.
And here's Jennifer on the side
of one of these towers.
The first time we
landed on this sea mount,
called Joelles,
it was raining fish.
Jennifer Hayes: They were
isolated, they were unfound,
they were untouched.
And they were de facto
marine protected areas.
They just had no sense of humans
and one of the scariest things
and in-your-face
conservation I have ever seen
was a group of fishermen
in a single boat,
what they call a banana boat
and they had found
Joelles reef
and they had anchored on it
and they had been on
it all night fishing.
And the minute they
saw our boat coming,
they cut their line
and they sped off.
And it turns out
when we went down,
all we found were
hooks and fishing line,
and half or more of
the fish were gone.
All of the pinjalo snappers.
Every pinjalo snapper was gone.
This is one night
on one small piece
of real estate in the
ocean that was wiped out.
And the next day when we were
in the Kimbe Bay market
there were the pinjalos.
And it shows you how fragile,
first off it shows us how
marine protected areas
work and function
and then it shows us
how vulnerable these places are.
David: There's small
things on this reef.
I have to tell you,
anemones and clownfish,
it's one of the most beautiful
friendships in the sea.
The anemones protect
the clownfish's eggs,
protect the clownfish at night
with its stinging tentacles.
The clownfish
protects the anemones
from being nibbled to
death by butterfly fish.
But Joelles has this
wonderful collection
of anemones and
toward the evening
they ball up like this
and the clownfish begin to
burrow in their stomachs.
I also managed to
photograph spawning.
Here are the big
female clownfish.
And the female is
the dominant partner
in this relationship.
If the female dies,
the largest male
turns into a female and
begins to produce eggs.
They're producing
eggs right now.
And that purple curtain
in the background
is the side of the anemone.
We dove with sharks.
(ocean waves)
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♪ (ambient chime
music continues) ♪
We were amazed and shocked
and pleased to see
sharks in Kimbe Bay.
They would meet you when
you rolled off the boat
and you were like,
"This is the way
it is supposed to be."
So it was just
another indicator,
another symbol that
these reefs had survived
where other reefs throughout
the Coral Triangle
had not done as well.
David: We dove on a place
called Father's Reef
and we met a hawksbill turtle.
And she met us on every dive.
We could swim with her
as she made her rounds
past schools of barracudas
and schools of bat-fish.
I love this picture
because it looks
like the turtle is flying.
And then she'd do
this amazing thing:
instead of going to the surface
and going back down to
another piece of bottom,
she would come and she
would rest on our tanks.
And she would do this, she
would take her flippers
and put her flippers
around the tank
and rest there.
Jennifer: It was wonderful,
she really was magic.
She met us on every dive
and she would follow you
and when she was tired
she would rest on you.
And it was a magic moment.
But it was also a
terrifying moment
in terms of that makes
this particular animal
very vulnerable.
The local fishermen
there, they fish the reefs
that they can find and
they harvest anything
they can find on the reefs,
from reef fish to turtles.
And we would be diving,
a local banana boat
comes up and with
a group of people,
the young man swims
down the turtle.
"How much, how much, how much?
You buy, you buy, you buy.
Would you like to buy?"
Your gut inclination is
for a handful of dollars
is to buy that turtle,
take it to the next
coral sea mount
and let it go.
But you can't do that
because you're setting
up a trade, an economy.
They'll go catch another turtle
and they'll come
back to you again.
Or they'll go catch
the same turtle
and bring it back to you.
We were in a tiny empire.
A perfect, tiny coral empire.
And we needed, we
needed to have an image
of coral.
A panorama.
A shot that said, "This
is this coral world."
Built of tiny polyps,
beautiful in existence,
city in the sea.
This picture isn't
the one we wanted.
David: And we kept looking
and we kept searching.
David:
A place called an Ann-Sofie.
It's a group of
islands at the tip
of the Williamez Peninsula.
And there's one little island,
it's not even an island,
it's an island with a
bunch of trees on it
and sort of a lone palm tree.
And it has in one corner of it,
a field in very,
very shallow water.
David: In less than a foot
there is a field
of beautiful purple-laced
coral intermingled
with a cropper coral
and stagnant coral.
David:
It's absolutely beautiful.
And we worked there
and photographed
David: a picture half and
half out of the water.
One of the things I
particularly liked to do.
And as we were working
a father and son came up
in a dugout, they
were fishing there.
We give them lunch later on.
(indistinct chatter)
Jennifer: We'll see
Anton and his papa again.
♪ (gentle guitar music) ♪
Whoa! Big fish!
(indistinct chatter)
It was one of those lovely days
where everything worked out.
We made another
dive, we went home.
Boiling clouds, complicated
skies of Walindi
and its tiny little island.
That's the kind of pictures
I really like to make.
David: Here's the picture.
We recently published a story
in the National
 Geographic magazine
on the gulf of St. Lawrence.
Jennifer:
It was a very challenging story
but very near and
dear to our hearts.
We live on the
St. Lawrence river
in a region called
The Thousand Islands.
This is our neighborhood.
David: Yeah, this is not
our house, incidentally.
Jennifer: This is, people
ask us all the time.
We live in an area
surrounded by 1,800 islands,
storybook castles and
an amazing creature
Jennifer: called the sturgeon.
There are 27 species of
sturgeon in the world.
They're all in the
northern hemisphere.
All 27 of them are
falling flat on their face
because they are long-lived;
they live to be over
100, sometimes 200.
Get this: they don't
spawn until they're
about 25 years old.
And then, not even
every year after that.
it's every five years.
So 25, 30, 35 and you can see,
all of a sudden, when
you put the pressure
of fisheries on a
species like this,
Jennifer: how these stocks
are collapsing.
And these sturgeon are very shy,
they like deep water,
they're very rare to see
underwater most of the year,
except for one week
in the month of June,
thousands of them
gather and they meet
on these spawning beds.
This particular type of
rock, in very fast water.
This water is like
washing machine water,
it is about a four knot current.
Right now I am behind
a big giant rock
trying to stay out
of the current.
And these girls, these are
all girls waiting to spawn,
just ignoring me because they're
all pumped up on hormones.
Any other time of the year
I couldn't get near them.
Jennifer: And the sturgeon
are a unique fish.
They are so ugly, I
think they're beautiful.
I would marry a sturgeon if
I could marry a sturgeon.
-I married a sturgeon.
-See their mouth and barbules.
-You did marry a sturgeon.
-I married a sturgeon.
Oh my God, you did.
These barbules, see
these four things.
Those are called barbules
and they have all these
chemosensory ability
and they go along the bottom
and they brush past something
and they say, "I can eat that."
And womp! Down
comes its mouth.
Have you ever seen
a mouth like that?
(audience awes)
David: Past Quebec the
river becomes an estuary.
And a little past
there the Saginaw River
joins the St. Lawrence
and there's a population
David: of beluga whales.
Beluga whales are
the white whales,
the canary whales.
They sing and they burble
and they make a lot of noise.
And this guy came right up to me
and kind of blew me a kiss,
it went bloop!
A little bubble came out.
(audience laughter)
David: And then the whale did
this marvelous thing.
He tried to eat the camera.
(audience laughter)
Jennifer: There used to
be 10,000 beluga whales
in the St. Lawrence.
It can support up to 10,000.
And then they were
fished; they were killed,
because all the fishermen
thought that they
were competing for fish
so they were slaughtered.
And then it got down to
a handful of thousand.
And just weeks ago a
report came out and said,
"No, no, no, no. We
are down to 800."
And what is happening
is there's high
infant mortality.
The problem is they
don't know what
is causing the infant mortality.
So the Department of Fisheries
and the Canadian scientists
are now in scramble
and panic mode
to figure out how to
preserve these 800 belugas.
They are precious
and they are almost
a symbol of the St. Lawrence.
David: And don't forget,
we are in French
Canada, French Canada.
And I photographed crabs.
David: Crabs mating.
(French accent) In French Canada
it is not just mating
but is L'Amour ; love.
(audience laughter)
They do this for weeks and weeks
at a time, you know.
(David laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
 Après, après l'sex, after
 l'sex comes l'cigarette.
(audience laughing)
Jennifer: Gimme that.
Oh my God.
Jennifer: The gulf of
St. Lawrence
freezes in the winter time
and it becomes the
world of the harp seal.
They are nursed by their mothers
for about 12 days.
Then they're abandoned,
they're left on the
ice to figure out
how to become a harp seal.
How to feed, how to swim,
how to do anything
and everything.
Jennifer: In 2011,
when this picture was made,
it took us three days by
boat to get to the ice.
It kept moving, there was
so little ice in the gulf.
And we located a patch
and a field of ice
and it had 10,000 seals.
And this is what 10,000
seals begins to look like.
And we can give you an
idea of what it's like
in the world of the harp seal.
That's its umbilical there.
A newborn.
Three days old, with
the mother in the back.
(baby seal crying out)
A very nervous mother.
(baby seal cries)
Still a very nervous mother.
To me, they're one of the
most beautiful creatures
on the planet.
For the first 12
days of their life,
when they're called
the white coats,
they look almost
like a stuffed toy.
(audience oohs and awes)
And once in a while
you'll see a blind one.
And it's very sad because
they'll come up to you,
thinking you're their mother.
They're desperate,
without that particular sensory.
And after 12 to 15
days they begin to molt
and they begin to
shed their white coat
and become what's
called a beater.
And at this point
they are also eligible
to enter the hunt.
The Canadian seal
hunt still goes on.
There's a lower quota
and they cannot
take the white coats
but they can take the beaters.
Jennifer: And David has found
a beater.
And I find a pup
peering through the ice,
looking for his mom.
He sees me, he's like, "No."
(audience laughs)
Mom is behind me,
going a little crazy now
because I'm between her
and her pup.
She rushes past me
and she greets her pup
and she coaxes him
into the water.
They meet with this
underwater nose-to-nose,
I call it a kiss of recognition.
(kissing sound)
It's like smooch,
are you my mom?
Are you my pup or
are you an impostor?
And while we're swimming
the pup is very curious.
What are you? Who are you?
What's going on? Who are you?
And he would try
to swim towards me,
he would get a little close
and the mother would come up
and literally hold
him down, "No."
And eventually she allowed
him to get a little closer
and he gets so close
and he scrabbles.
He begins to climb up on my--
Here you come be the
seal, you're there.
-So he begins to do this.
-I'm the seal.
And then he climbs up onto me,
I'm the raft, I'm the ice.
And now he's on my
chest, he's tired
and he's on my chest.
And he's nosing my mask
like he did his mom.
Like I'm the impostor,
I am the impostor.
Jennifer: We swim along
and we move
into this very open water.
Now we're resting,
we're all stopped.
Then something
nips my left ankle,
then something nips
my right ankle.
And I look down and
there's 30 or 40
male harp seals
circling below me.
A male comes up over my back,
pushes me down,
his penis gets caught in my mask
(audience laughs with disgust)
taking it off with him.
The mask drops, we're
in 3,000 feet of water.
I see it, I grab it.
Got my camera here
and the male is
going down below me
and the female sweeps past
and she goes down and the mother
is beating the crap
out of this male.
(audience laughs and applauds)
The mother surfaces,
she surfaces and she's
grunting and snorting
(heaving noise)
and she comes back
and I'm thinking,
"I'm not sure what's
going to happen now."
But she comes back
and she uses her head
and her flipper
and her entire body
and she kind of
scoops up her pup.
Kind of using
everything she's got.
And she kind of gets
him in front of her.
And then she uses her
flipper, her nose,
her body and she scoops me up.
(audience laughs)
-Now...
-Super mom.
The pup and
I were being propelled.
Herded through the water,
out of this open
area where we had
all the males beneath us.
I ducked underneath and
I watched the mother
and the pup disappear.
I'm pumped up on adrenaline,
I'm ecstatic, I'm excited,
I go to the edge of the ice
and I throw my camera up.
And I'm taking
off my weight belt
and just as I'm taking
off my weight belt,
right at the edge of
the ice a male harp seal
comes under the edge of the ice
and he bites me
square in the groin.
And he lets go.
And then he bites me
square in the thigh.
Wonk! And he lets go.
And I have a very,
very memorable scar
from all of that.
But it's not the scar
and it's not the male
that I would ever or
want to or will dwell on.
It is the female
and her reaction.
Jennifer: And I will say
the world of the harp seal
has been a changing world.
David and I were on
our way back to shore,
a storm came up and the
ice was so bad, so weak,
(Jennifer: deep breath in)
that when the
storm came through,
it wrecked the sea ice
and 10,000 pups perished.
Every one of them died.
They had 100 percent
mortality of the gulf seals
in that particular year.
This past year in 2014
was a big ice year.
That's a relief, we
had a relief year,
because we had had three to four
almost full-on 100
percent mortality years.
So it is a shifting world
for our climate there.
And what I want to close
on is David and I go back
every year now.
We have become
addicted to the ice.
-We feel--
-Extraordinary place.
We go back every year
and what we're trying to do
is create a shifting paradigm
away from hunting into
a model of ecotourism.
Now we can take some people up
and we take a week
out of the harp
seal hunting boat.
We buy a week, we
buy another week,
we buy another week.
And hopefully we'll show
them a different economy.
An ecotourism-based economy
where we can take the
pressure off the hunting.
And with that I would like
to thank you all for coming.
You've been
an incredible audience.
(applause)
♪ (gentle string music) ♪
(English US - SDH)
