Sea Turtle Stories From Behind the Lens of Thomas Peschak
The majesty, beauty, and fragility of the world's oceans and coasts is uniquely brought to life on the printed page through the images and stories of National Geographic photographer Thomas Peschak. Educated in South Africa as a marine biologist, he fully embraced photography once he realized that his creative work could have greater conservation impact than his scientific research. His TED Talk, “Dive into an Ocean Photographer’s World” has been viewed more than 1 million times, and his @thomaspeschak Instagram account has 1.2 million followers. As a National Geographic explorer and fellow, and the director of storytelling for the Save Our Seas Foundation, Thomas now merges science with photojournalism to tackle critical ocean conservation issues around the world.
In his forthcoming book, Wild Seas, Thomas shares more than 200 remarkable ocean images—and the stories behind them—from close encounters with Galápagos sharks, to surfing seals, dancing albatrosses, and, of course, sea turtles. The book charts his transformation from a marine biologist to full-time conservation advocate, who—armed with little more than a mask, fins, and a camera—offers an impassioned case for revering and preserving the world’s oceans. Through vivid photographs of the ocean’s splendor and vulnerability, Thomas’s provocative book presents a compelling case for change.
Readers of SWOT Report are familiar with Thomas’s unique sea turtle shots, which have been featured in our pages over several years, including the iconic cover of SWOT Report, vol. V. Many more of Thomas’s artful images illustrated a once-in-a-generation feature article on sea turtles that appeared in National Geographic Magazine’s October 2019 issue. Titled “Sea Turtles are Surviving—Despite Us,” the article was written by Craig Welch. For nearly two years leading up to its publication, Thomas traveled to the remote ocean corners of Earth to capture the article’s photographs, garnering what we think are extraordinarily striking and unusual photographs of sea turtles, their habitats, and the humans who interact with them, plus stories to accompany them. In the pages that follow, and scattered throughout this volume of SWOT Report, are our favorite Thomas Peschak sea turtle images, accompanied by his words describing the inspiration, emotions, and techniques used to capture them.
This article originally appeared in SWOT Report, vol. 16 (2021). Click here to download the complete article as a PDF.