Photographers Blog

Off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada

By Ben Nelms

Last year, Canada became home to the first shark fishery in the world that was labeled with a Marine Stewardship Council certification. This is an internationally recognized certification that lists the B.C Spiny Dogfish Shark industry as ‘certified sustainable seafood.’ The fishery is located in the Pacific waters of Canada, off the coast and around Vancouver Island.

I spent a handful of nights on a commercial fishing boat called the Ocean Sunset. We departed from the small village of Ucluelet, which is on the Western shores of Vancouver Island. The only thing I forgot on land was my sea legs.

GALLERY: SHARK FISHING

After a few hours of rough swells, the sea got the better of me and I was ‘feeding the fish’ as the crew would say. This was terrible for two reasons; Firstly, anyone who has been seasick on a commercial fishing boat knows that the environment is cramped, restless and rotting fish bait surrounds you. Secondly, after working to get access to this boat for nearly two months, I knew I couldn’t stop documenting life on the boat just because I was sick.

The shark fishing itself is interesting and the ship’s crews have the process down like clockwork. The kilometer long lines are flung into the depths of the ocean and two crewmen attach bait with hooks to the line while it unwinds. After placing two of these long lines out in the ocean, the boat hurries back to the first one and starts winching the line up with their catch. The sharks that are caught are brought overboard and seamlessly unhooked and flung into the deep storage freezer below deck in one swift movement.

After a few hours, I had to start looking for different angles. The process is often so quick that they could bring up roughly 10 sharks in a minute. After four days, I had to develop new ways to find a fresh way to photograph this tedious process.

Smoking like 400 years ago…

By Michael Dalder

After eighty-four successive days without catching a fish, the old man Santiago tells his young friend Manolin that he will go “far out” into the ocean. And there, a huge marlin takes his bait but Santiago is physically unable to reel him in. Nevertheless, Santiago refuses to let him go, so this leads to a three-day struggle between the fisherman and the fish.

This famous scene of Ernest Hemingway’s novella “The Old Man and the Sea” was in my mind when I first contacted the Bavarian fisherman Thomas Amort from Lake Koenigssee.

I heard about Amort – a third generation fisherman who lives in a fishing cottage on a remote peninsula, reachable only by boat, next to St. Bartholomae – from a tourist boat captain of the Lake Königsee fleet.

By Bruno Kelly

It was a dream come true for me to accompany the men who fish the pirarucu, South America’s largest freshwater fish. It was even more so to do it in the region of the Juruá River, one of the most inhospitable, winding and virgin rivers in the Amazon Basin.

The pirarucu, also known as the arapaima, is considered a living fossil. The adventure to fish them began from our departure from Manaus in an amphibious plane able to set down on dry land or water, called a Grand Caravan. Our pilot assured us that this is one of the few light aircraft certified to transport the president of the United States, and that left us much less nervous since we were heading into a region with nothing more than jungle and rivers below us.

During the flight I learned that the fishing would only take place during the night, which was a shock as I knew there would be absolutely no light.

By Swoan Parker

“I’m living in a bad place and didn’t want to get involved in any bad things”, is what 27-year-old Wilkens Sinar told me. His neighborhood, Cité Soleil, is one of the poorest and most dangerous slums in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and just 500 miles from the United States. This densely populated area located near the capital of Port-au-Prince houses families who mostly migrated from the countryside in search of work. Unable to afford the rents in most of the capital, they have no other choice but to settle here where powerful gangs operate rampantly.

As I walked through the endless maze of shanty homes built of pieces of concrete or junk metal latched together, the smell of raw sewage permeated the air. I found myself at the seacoast where small boats were docked and fishermen were either setting off or returning with their catch of mostly small crabs and fish.

I watched the activity for a while before striking up a conversation with Wilkens, and his friends and fellow fishermen Dieufait Louis-Pierre, 27, and Mackenson Dollus, 28. It was 6 am and the three were just returning from collecting their crab baskets that they had set out the night before.

By Yuriko Nakao

Seaweed grower Takaaki Watanabe took to the sea in his boat before the massive tsunami roared into the northeastern Japanese town of Minamisanriku, becoming one of a lucky few to save the vessel essential for their livelihood.

But back on shore the raging waters of March 11 swept away his wife, his mother and his house, built on land in his family for 13 generations, though his three teenaged daughters managed to survive.

“At that time, I wasn’t sure whether I could actually resume the cultivation (farming seaweed, scallops and oysters). I had no way of knowing my future,” he said recently.

The fishing harbor of Mumbai, India, has been one of my favorite hunting grounds for pictures in the city. It was one of the first places I discovered upon landing in the city seven months ago. The fishing harbor is small, a ‘little’ smelly and very crowded. You can’t stand in one place and if you do, then you’ll be pushed about and abused by the locals who don’t like tourists taking pictures during business hours.

For this particular picture I had to wait for almost an hour. I noticed earlier that cranes tried to swoop down on a particular kind of fish being carried by the fisher folks on their heads. Now I had to find a good angle and try to position myself from where I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way and there would still be some room to maneuver.

From atop the ropes of fishing boats tied to a small pillar on the dock appeared to be just that position. It allowed a little height too.