Brian Skerry on Sea Change and the Warming Gulf of Maine

Documentary First, Episode 228. Christian Taylor talks with Brian Skerry, National Geographic photographer and producer of the NOVA series Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine. 71 minutes. Released July 18, 2024.

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What makes a man walk away from a steady sales job, a company car and a 401(k) to photograph fish?

For National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry, it was a dream he'd had since he was a teenager sitting in a dark auditorium at a Boston dive show. Decades later, that dream led him to Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine, a three-part NOVA series for PBS about a body of water warming 97 percent faster than the global ocean, and the people and animals who depend on it.

In Episode 228 of Documentary First, host Christian Taylor talks with Brian, who grew up in a working-class mill town in Massachusetts, didn't get on an airplane until he was 26, and worked his way up from a corrugated box factory to top sales rep before he "jumped off a cliff" to shoot full time. His father, who grew up in the Depression and served in World War II, never really understood the choice. Brian says he never looked back, and that the people skills he learned selling boxes are the same ones he uses to pitch an idea to a streaming executive.

Brian has photographed more than 30 stories for National Geographic and produced the Emmy-winning Secrets of the Whales. With Sea Change, he went home to the waters he's dived for four decades. He explains why the Gulf of Maine is like "this giant bathtub that you've turned off the cold water faucet," why he tells climate stories through fishermen, clammers and scientists, and why he believes people protect what they love. He also tells Christian how the crew filmed terns choking on the wrong fish, and which scenes had to be recreated with lobster scientists.

In this episode, you'll learn

• How a dive show in Boston gave a teenage Brian his life's plan
• Why he kept a factory and sales job for years, and what made him quit
• What selling corrugated boxes taught him about pitching films
• Why Brian says a photographer gets hired on a portfolio, and how to build one
• How pitching his own stories turned a photographer into a producer
• How Brian directs a camera operator underwater in 40 degree water
• Why the Gulf of Maine is warming 97 percent faster than the global ocean
• Why Sea Change tells a climate story through people first
• Why he believes "people protect what they love"
• How much of the wildlife was filmed in the wild, and what wasn't

Questions and answers

What is Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine about?

Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine is a three-part NOVA series on PBS about a body of water stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia that is warming 97 percent faster than the global ocean. Producer Brian Skerry says it had to be three films at once: a blue chip natural history series about seals, puffins and lobsters, a people story about fishermen and clammers, and an explanation of climate change. It premiered July 24, 2024.

Why is the Gulf of Maine warming so fast?

Brian Skerry explains that melting Arctic ice, including Greenland's glaciers, is adding fresh water that weakens the Labrador Current, which used to bring cold water down from Canada, while the Gulf Stream has more influence. He compares it to "this giant bathtub that you've turned off the cold water faucet," and says changing currents may be carrying baby lobsters into deeper water where fewer survive.

How did Brian Skerry become a National Geographic photographer?

Brian started diving at about 15 and decided at a Boston dive show that he wanted to explore the ocean with a camera. He studied photography in college, worked on charter boats without pay, and shot for dive and other magazines while holding a factory and then sales job. He got his first National Geographic assignment in the late 1990s and was well into his 30s when he left sales to shoot full time.

Why does Sea Change tell a climate story through people?

Brian says we are a storytelling culture. A person you trust telling you what they saw, the science that backs it up, and the visuals that show it add up to what he calls a "trifecta." So the series follows a scallop diver, a Native American clammer fighting invasive green crabs, and kelp scientist Doug Rasher alongside the wildlife. He adds that people protect what they love.

How do nature documentaries film animal behavior?

Brian Skerry says it comes down to research, patience and time. His crews spent weeks in blinds, often ones researchers had set up over years, waiting with long lenses for a tern to return with a fish. He estimates about 95 percent of the Sea Change wildlife was filmed in the wild. Lobsters releasing their eggs were filmed in captivity at a Maine laboratory, under the guidance of scientists.

How do you go from a day job to a career in photography or film?

Brian kept his sales job until his photo business, stock sales, magazine work and speaking could carry him, and he used the flexible schedule to shoot on long weekends. He tells young photographers they will be hired or not on their portfolio, so they need a strategy and a timeline to build one. Christian, a voiceover coach, gives the same advice: keep the day job, train, and save before you jump.

Where can I watch Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine?

The NOVA series page links each episode on pbs.org, and GBH says the series streams on the PBS App and PBS station platforms.

Chapters

Times match the YouTube video.

• 0:00 Brian Skerry on Sea Change
• 3:15 A Teenage Diver's Epiphany
• 12:31 Selling Boxes to Fund a Dream
• 22:43 Build a Portfolio With a Plan
• 26:59 How Does a Photographer Become a Producer?
• 34:32 Inside the Gulf of Maine
• 37:15 Why Tell Another Climate Story?
• 47:04 Fishermen, Clammers and Kelp
• 53:43 People Protect What They Love
• 1:00:31 How Do You Film Wildlife Behavior?
• 1:08:27 DocuView Deja View Picks

Watch the film

Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine is on the NOVA series page at PBS, with episodes on pbs.org and the PBS App. Credits are in the GBH press release.

DocuView Deja View picks: Brian recommends Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story (2024), directed by his friend and fellow Nat Geo photographer Charlie Hamilton James, about a man in Shetland who befriends a wild otter. He also recommends Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple (2024), Bill Teck's HBO documentary about the E Street Band guitarist and Sopranos actor, a guy Brian says "never quit." See every guest pick on the DocuView Deja View page.

About the guest

Brian Skerry is a film producer, director and photojournalist who specializes in marine wildlife. He has been a contributing photographer for National Geographic magazine since 1998, with more than 30 feature stories, including seven covers. He won the 2021 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary as a producer of Secrets of the Whales (Disney+), and also produced Return of the White Shark. He is an 11-time award winner in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, the only photographer to win the Peter Benchley Award for Excellence in Media, a 2017 Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year, and the author of 12 books, including Ocean Soul, SHARK and Secrets of the Whales. Brian's bio | Instagram

About the series: Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine was inspired and produced by Brian Skerry, and written and produced by Chun-Wei Yi and Stella Cha. It is a co-production of GBH and So World Media for NOVA.

Related conversations

More from Documentary First on nature and the natural world: the composers of Prehistoric Planet on building instruments from fossils, Erik and Chris Ewers on their PBS film about Thoreau, and Sarah Burns and David McMahon on Leonardo da Vinci.

About Documentary First

Documentary First is a weekly podcast about the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them. Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom, talks with filmmakers, distributors, entertainment lawyers, actors and more, from Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy to first-timers, across nearly 300 conversations. Each week brings one of two formats: a long-form conversation with the people behind films for HBO, Netflix, PBS and independent film, or The Deep Dive, where Christian takes one insight from a recent conversation and follows it wherever it leads. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide. New episodes every week.

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Full transcript

This transcript was made from the recording and lightly cleaned up. It may contain small errors.

Christian: Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look into documentary filmmaking. I'm your host, Christian Taylor, and today I'm joined by a story documentary film producer and photo journalist, Skerry. Welcome Brian, really nice to have you on the show.

Brian Skerry: Well, it's so great to be here, Christian. Thank

Christian: It's beautiful for you to make time for us, but before we start, I just want to jump in. You have an amazing bio and I really would love to read every single thing in it. So if people, but I can't, so if people have time, they need to look you up and they need to see everything that you have done. But I'm going to dive right in and read some of the important recent things. So Brian Skerry is a film producer, director, and veteran photojournalist specializing in marine wildlife and underwater realms. Brian's signature style is to create intimate stories and visuals that inspire audiences to see the world in new ways. His recent documentary film credits include Secrets of the Whales and Return of the White Shark, both currently streaming on However, on July 24th, a new documentary three -part special series for PBS Nova will debut, and we're gonna talk about that today. In 2021, Brian received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary as a Producer of Secrets of the Whales. Since 1998, Brian has been a contributing photographer for National Geographic Magazine, where he has created and photographed more than 30 feature stories, including seven cover stories. His work has also been featured in publications such as Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Paris Match, Esquire, and Audubon. He is an 11 -time award winner in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition held in London. And he's also been recognized with awards from Pictures of the Year, International, Nature's Best, Communication Arts, and is the only photographer to win the coveted Peter Benchley Award for excellence in media. And that is just a portion of all of his accolades. So I am just honored to be here and to pick your brain. We are here to talk about this new thing coming up, sea change. But I do hope that you will share with us some of your expertise and how you got started in the business, because I feel like we have a lot to learn from

Brian Skerry: Well, thank you very much, Christian. That's very kind. And I hope I don't disappoint after all of that. My goodness. Thanks.

Christian: Well, no, I mean, it is your bio, so certainly you have some history that you can share with us. So speaking of that history, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got started in this whole filmmaking game?

Brian Skerry: But, hmm. Yeah, well, you know, I started out as a diver. guess that's where it all began for me. As a young boy, I grew up in a working class town, a textile mill town in Massachusetts, west of Boston. And I didn't live on the ocean. I didn't know anybody who did anything like that. But I was reading National Geographic magazine, watching the old Cousteau documentaries as a kid, the TV show, and just dreamed about doing that kind of work, being an ocean explorer. So I actually started scuba diving when I was about 15 years old. And initially, you know, for me, that was the end game. I just wanted to be a diver explorer of the ocean. But maybe a year or two after that, I attended a diving show, a conference in Boston. And As a teenager, I was sitting in that darkened audience and I watched underwater photographers and filmmakers presenting their work. And I often describe it as an epiphany where a light went on in my head. And I realized that's how I want to explore the ocean was with a camera. I remember telling my girlfriend that evening as we were riding back on a train, the commuter rail back to my car, I said, I know what I want to do with my life. I want to be an underwater photographer, filmmaker, you know. I had no idea how to do that and I didn't know anybody who did anything like that. It was in hindsight an extremely lofty dream. But you know, I ended up coming up with a little plan. I went to college very soon after that. I studied photography, photojournalism. I was a communications media major so I could take classes in filmmaking, television production, animation, all of those things. However, I was learning sort of the fundamentals of those things, know, photography and so forth. learned about f -stops and shutter speeds and composition, but I was working underwater. I bought myself an old, you know, used underwater camera back in those days, sort of taught myself how to use that and was making very bad pictures, terrible photos, but you know, eventually chipped away at it. I worked on charter boats. I wasn't being paid, you know, I just go out on these boats. for no pay, to be able to have access to diving help, help around the boat and so forth. And my goal from those early days was to either do one of two things. I either wanted to be an underwater documentary filmmaker, like the people I was admiring watching their films. And in those days, there was maybe a handful of people who were doing that kind of stuff. Or I wanted to be a National Geographic magazine photographer. And both, again, were these extremely exclusive clubs. know, at National Geographic in those days, there was three underwater photographers, all very prolific, and they didn't seem to want to be going anywhere anytime soon. They were well established and, you know, didn't want anybody butting into the club. But... You know, after school I worked many different jobs, but I always had the photo business on the side. I spent my money on equipment, on cameras, and underwater housings, and dive equipment. And when I started to save up enough money, I began to travel and shoot in other places. I was doing stories and assignments for other magazines, dive magazines, for Snow Country magazine who wanted to do a story on... the Olympic ski team who was training in a swimming pool with a physical therapist. So anything I could do to build up my portfolio. And then eventually in the late 90s, I got my first assignment with National Geographic. you know, it was a difficult story, but they liked what I did. They sort of made a decision to develop me as one of their regular shooters. So that sort of came first and it was something I very much wanted to do. So for a while you know, put the documentary film or video on the back burner. mean, back in those days, what little I was doing, I was shooting 16 millimeter or film and things like that. And I went into photography, which, you know, was a very wonderful thing for me to get that first assignment. And, you know, now 26 years later, I just had my 33rd story in the magazine. had a cover story last month in the June issue of National Geographic. you know, it's been absolutely fantastic. I love still photography. I love the notion of photojournalism, particularly in wildlife for me and being able to do this as a living for over almost three decades. However, I also never lost my love of documentary film. And I realized that there's great value in storytelling in both mediums and nowadays in other mediums too, know, vision pro glasses or immersive experiences. There's only ways to express these stories. I, over the years, I did a little dabbling in that. did a Nova documentary back in the, think, Geez, early 2000s or late 90s, it a shipwreck story, but really was mostly still photography for most of that career. But in 2021, I released Secrets of the Whales, which was a project. that I created in 2017 for National Geographic in Disney and then served as a producer. So I didn't have the camera in my hand. was also parallel, you know, shooting a story for the magazine, a 40 -page cover story for National Geographic and producing the documentary series as well. So that was sort of my re -emergence into that field a little bit and in a big way, really. you know, working, hiring cameramen with the production company and sort of crafting what became Secrets of the Whales, which is still streaming now on Disney+. And then right on the heels of that. I pitched another story with a friend of mine, Adam Geiger and his wife, Collette Baudry, who own Sea Light Pictures in Australia. We pitched that to National Geographic about great white sharks on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, sort of the reemergence of white sharks there, this reconstruction of an ecosystem that existed long ago. And then we spent two years working on that. then that, you know, while that was happening, I began this PBS documentary series, Sea Change, as well. And I have to just say a little, you know, postscript to that is that as much as I love having that camera in my hand. and will still be doing that. I do sort of relish this role as producer and director because, you know, as I start to look back on my career, I've learned a few things and I know a little bit about animals and behavior and I knew how to put the pieces together. You know, those 30 odd stories that I did for National Geographic magazine, I served not only as the photographer, I mean, that's my credit as photographer, but Nearly every one of those stories was an idea that I proposed. And then if it gets approved, I have to come up with a budget. And in order to create a budget, I had to figure out the logistics. So, you know, before I even proposed a story to the magazine, I might spend a year doing research and know where it is I want to go and what time of year I'm going to be there and, you know, talk to scientists about what the likelihood of seeing these animals and getting close to them and what's the visibility going to be like and what's the weather going to be like. I was. producing all of those stories realistically as well as photographing them and then working on the edit with my photo editor and then working on layout. So in many ways, I think there for me is a lot of parallels between my still photography career and producing documentaries now today. I think there's a lot in common.

Christian: I totally agree. I do wanna go back because we went through a whole career there in just about eight minutes, but I wanna go back to the beginning because you did start out like a lot of filmmakers start out, really young, having these lofty ideas of this is what I wanna do in the film industry or the photography industry. and you volunteer, I'm gonna volunteer here, I'm gonna spend my time doing this. When you're in high school or early college, we have a luxury of doing that when maybe we're in our parents, under our parents' roof or whatever. But then there's this time where we do have to make a living somehow and also do our craft at the same time. So how did you support yourself? What was your day job after college when you were trying to make this work. How am I going to pay for myself while I continue to learn, while I'm trying to get a job in this industry? How did you make that

Brian Skerry: Yeah, well, it's a really great question, Christian, and I'm glad you asked it because, you know, as I alluded to, I came from you know, rather humble beginnings, this little, as I say, textile mill town. My parents were not affluent. I, you know, I didn't get on an airplane until I was 26 years old. I flew to Florida from Boston to do a dive trip. And I, you know, I felt like I was going to Australia or someplace. I thought it was a exotic trip. So I didn't have the resources to do anything. So I absolutely had to work and support myself and pay the bills and also buy equipment to do the thing that I really wanted to do. So I worked a number of different jobs, but for a number of those years, I went back to a job that I had when I was in college. I got a job, a very unsexy, unromantic thing. I was working in a factory that made corrugated boxes. Ultimately, it was a private company in Massachusetts, family -owned business. They ultimately were acquired by Georgia Pacific, a big paper company. And, you know, I remember in the summers as a college student working out in the factory, you know, second shift, third shift out there. And then after college, I did a few other jobs. You know, I was literally working in convenience stores or, you know, working in landscaping, different things like that. But I needed money and I knew this company paid, you know, real money for for that kind of work. So I remember wanting to buy this new Nikon, I think it was a D3 camera and an underwater housing. So I said, well, I'm just going to go back and work for a couple of months and make the money. Well, it turned into years. It turned into several years. And I went from working in the factory to being a sales rep on the road. I had a company car. I was dressing in nice suits, opening new business. I think I ultimately brought in, I don't $5 million in new business for this company, became one of their top sales reps. So here I was sort of living this, you know, for a lot of people, maybe a dream, the American dream. I had a good job. I had a 401k. I had, you know, retirement. I had benefits, health care. And I literally jumped off a cliff in one day and just said, you know, I couldn't do it anymore. You know, and no, no, you know, dispersions on people who do that. mean, a lot of friends that still do that. But, you know, it was eating me up inside because I knew what I wanted to do. And I felt if given a chance, I could do it. So I literally I jumped off a cliff. I remember my father, you know, in shock, saying to me, wait a minute, let me get this straight. You're going to you're going to give that all up to go do what? Take pictures, you know? That's insane. But, you know, he came from that era. He was in World War II and grew up in the Depression. you know, the idea of having a job with benefits was what you aspired to not to be some vagabond, you know, traveling around the ocean trying to take pictures of fish. So, you know, to the day he passed, he never really understood. I have to say that I never looked back. You know, I remember around that time watching this documentary series on PBS about Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. And he talked in there about Campbell saying that many people in life are on a set of train tracks going in one direction and right next to them. is a parallel set of tracks that would make them much more happier. It's sort of what their destiny, what really is. And they just need to make that jump. And so many times when people do, these invisible hands of the universe, know, God, whatever, comes out to support you. And I remembered holding close to that. It was like, you know, I hope that's true. And I can't speak for anybody else, but I can say for me, I made that leap of faith and honestly never regretted it for a day, never looked back. Conversely, or in addition, I would add that the skills, the experience I had in manufacturing, in sales, in doing those jobs that I did, while I didn't like it at the time, I think they paid dividends in my career as a photographer and as a filmmaker. In my work as a storyteller, know, on one day I might be dealing with a PhD scientist at some prestigious institution and I have to be able to communicate effectively to them or a fisherman who you know, as in high school in some country where I don't really speak the language, but, you know, knowing how to navigate people, to understand people, I think, even though I work in wildlife, is very important. And to be able to sell my ideas, you know, being able to go into an executive's office at a streaming platform or, you know, publishing company. with an idea and get that message communicated effectively, I think what came from me in that world where I was selling boxes, you if I could sell boxes, I could sell an idea about a shark documentary. So at least I think I could. So anyway, yeah, that was sort of my trajectory. And at the time it was all very messy and confusing and filled with angst. But, you know, looking back now, it's all It was all good.

Christian: I'm so glad I asked that question actually because that is a fascinating story. And I think so many people in our industry find themselves in that quandary. And it is a very risky proposition and a very scary proposition to take that, you know. leave that security of that day job where you have been successful. But not only, I can imagine, not only those people skills that you learned while you were in that sales job, but you were organizing yourself, you're organizing your time, you are learning logistics, you are learning about travel, you're learning how to make schedules, you are learning budgets, you are learning so many different skills. while you are having a 401k, while you are having stability, and that stability gives you the ability to buy equipment and then to practice on your own. So there were so many advantages during that time to having that stable job that gave you that launching pad and that security to be able to jump to that parallel track. so when people are in that situation where they are in this job that they don't want to be in and they do want to do another thing. I think it is important for them to realize there is a tipping point will come at some point, you know, where yes, you want to be a filmmaker or yes, you want to be a cinematographer or you want to work in sound and you want to do that for a living and you want to get paid and you want to be out of this job. And you just will know, but you've got to keep building up that platform in order to jump to that other. parallel track, think. And I guess what I want, I really want to know is what age were you at that time? And, you know,

Brian Skerry: I was, yeah, I was well into my thirties at that point, you know. And again, I had built a reasonably robust photo business. You know, I was selling photos for stock. I was doing assignments for magazines. I was doing speaking engagements. I had written a book. Yeah, all on the side. And again, you know, one of the luxuries of having a sales

Christian: on the side.

Brian Skerry: job, a sales career, was that as long as I was managing my own business, even though I was working for a company, in many ways, I was running my own little business there and I had my own accounts and I had relationships with these people. And I could take a a Friday or a Monday off or maybe even a week off as long as I was staying in touch with people and everybody was. content and happy and if something came up, I could react, but I could go out and shoot. I couldn't go to Australia, but I could shoot in New England where I was living. if I took three or four days and was working on a personal project, that was fine because my business was managing itself and somebody needed me and whatever. So I sort had that luxury of being able to do that. think if you're working a real hard and fast nine to five job or something, it might be a little harder. You have to kind of relegate yourself to weekends or days off or vacations, but I could massage it a little bit and do things my own way. But yeah, I think your analysis overall was perfect. That is exactly right. I learned a lot during that time. And I think nothing is wasted. I really believe that. There's, I'm sure so many people like I was out there that just hated what they're doing. They're sort of despising what they're doing. They're saying, this is not me. I know I could be doing this and that's what I should be doing. But you're right, the tipping point will come and understanding where you are today and where you want to be is a big part of that equation. And I always tell people to have a strategy. You can be flexible and it may change, What is the strategy? know, when photographers come to me and say, I want to do what you do, I say, well, all right, you know, where are you now? If you're in college, if you're studying photography or whatever, that's great. But recognize that what is going to get you that job is a portfolio. You will either be hired or not be hired on your portfolio. So what do you need to do between now and five years from now or however long it is to produce a really strong portfolio? And if you want to do what I do, you need to shoot photojournalistically. It's not just about the beautiful photos. You have to do those too, but you got to be able to tell a story. you know, maybe you take workshops, maybe you work on personal projects, maybe you team up with friend or somebody who can write or if you can write you know you you go out and shoot a story you edit it tightly you pitch it to some local publications or write it as well and make the editor's job easy on the same thing with video you you're producing a reel you're you're working on little personal projects where you can have sequences that actually show you know how to comprehend visual storytelling in motion, that you can produce these sequences and scenes. Maybe you've got stock footage that you're selling on the side, which can be lucrative these days. So always. So I think having a strategy, understanding where did you want to be, giving yourself a timeline, working on goals along the way, where do I want to be in a year, where do I want to be in two years, three years, five years, I think that's an important part of the equation.

Christian: Yeah, interestingly enough, I am a voiceover actor and I'm also a voiceover coach and I've been in this acting voiceover industry for about 40 years and a lot of people, I've done some coaching as well and so a lot of people will come to me and say, know, how can I do this? I want to do this as a living and I always tell them it is really important that you keep your day job. and you continue practicing your craft on the side. And you are taking classes and you are studying from other people and you are building up a nest egg from which you are able to buy equipment. And then at some point when you are ready and your skills are ready and you have a proof of concept that you can do this job and make money by working nights and weekends or whatever and you have you know, six months of income saved up, you know, then you can make that jump and you're, making a plan. You have to make a plan, in order to transition to this thing that you really want to do. And it's the same in voiceover. It's the same in photography, cinematography, sound, whichever creative endeavor I think that you want to go into. it is important to have a plan. It's important to save your money and, it can be done. It can be done. You just have to have a plan. You have to have the will and to never quit.

Brian Skerry: That's perfect advice, perfect advice. And what you mentioned earlier too about the business side of things, understanding the money side and the budget side. So many artists neglect that or historically have sort of neglected that side, but that's what's gonna keep you going. mean, if you understand how to do that and the most successful people that I work with today, young emerging photographers, filmmakers, DPs, everybody, they're struggling out there, but there are some that are just doing it a little bit better. They know how to add value to what they do. They know how to manage their money. They know where to give and take and so forth. And those are skills that you can absolutely learn. You're not born with them and you have to learn them. But recognizing that that's an important part is you can have your own little epiphany because if you want to last in this business, you got to be able to support yourself.

Christian: Absolutely. Now, one other thing I want to skip ahead because you then talk about, okay, you went into photojournalism, photography, then photojournalism, but then all of a sudden you're producing, you're producing these films. Now, producing is a special skill set where it's not just telling people what to do or, I mean, it's a very complicated, you're managing time. You're managing people, you're managing money, know, budgets, you're managing all sorts of things. And I tell people, I became a producer as well, I'm a filmmaker, and I became a producer because I was a mom. I was a mom first, and I had to do all of those things as a mom. So no, I didn't go to school, but I learned along the way. So I wonder how you learned along the way, because I don't think you went to school to become a producer per se, right?

Brian Skerry: No, no, I didn't. And I didn't, you know, feel that that was even necessary for me. I mean, at that point in my career, when I began producing, it was largely because I think I was driving the story, you know, in each of these three most recent documentary projects that you outlined. So Secrets of the Whales, Return of the White Shark and now Sea Change. I served as a producer after I created the idea. So it was, these were my ideas and I would go and pitch them and. then once they were greenlit, if they were greenlit and they were, I would serve as producer. But that was because I sort of had a vision for what this story was. I had done the research I knew, just like with my magazine stories, I might spend a year figuring out what that story is and knowing where to go at what time of year and what researchers to work with, where to get a boat or a helicopter or the nuts and bolts of how to produce it. I knew if I wasn't gonna be doing the camera work, I knew the best camera operators to hire or the various. expertise that we needed to bring into those projects. It wasn't completely me. And again, I worked, I had two other producers like on the most recent one, for example, C Change. You know, I worked with Chen Wei Yi and his wife, Stella Cha, who were very experienced in the television business. And, you know, so when it came to hiring the editing team or different things, music and scoring the music and so forth, they had expertise in that. again, you know, television and film we all know is a much more collaborative process than even still photography, which is a little bit more solitary. For many of those years, it was just me and an assistant out there, and then I'd come back and work with editors and lay out people. with film, it's a lot different. So I don't want to imply that I alone can do this. It wasn't me. But I sort of moved into the role of producer, I think, largely because these were my ideas and I had it all sort of mapped out as best we could and brought that sort of experience to the table, I guess.

Christian: Well, and truthfully, what you're saying is, I was a photojournalist, so you've got the visuals, then you have the story idea, and then you're kind of putting it all together, and because you've actually done it yourself, you have the how -to, and you've spent the money. So you've now put it all together, and you can sit at the top of the project and say, I know how to do this from all those different small pieces, I think it's fascinating because what you've done then is you, before you've become this producer, you've done the writing, you've done the directing, you've done the cinematography, you learned all of those pieces beforehand kind of on your own. So once you've created the story and you've found it and you've been your own pitch man, so you've been your executive producer also. You've kind of been able to do all that. And that's just fascinating to me. You put all those skills together and then you can sit at the top and tell people this is what I want it to be

Brian Skerry: Yeah, no, that's also a great analysis. And I would add too, though, that, you know, with each of these projects, of course, in the documentary natural history world, the producer is also often a director, as you just pointed out. in many of these cases, like on sea change, I had

Christian: Yep.

Brian Skerry: great cameraman working with me, know, former assistant who's a great DP now doing really wonderful big projects, but I would physically get in the water with him, you know, so I'd put on my dry suit and my tanks and, you know, and I'm, I'm shooting alongside of him. And, you know, we, remember this one day we were shooting a sea urchin bed, you know, and I,

Christian: I'm sure you can't help it.

Brian Skerry: I stopped him and he's great visual. mean, he's probably better far better than me, but I knew what I wanted and I kind of tapped him on the shoulder and I said, wait. do this and I pretended to have the camera in my hand and I swam up over this bed of sirechens and said, you I want you to look down like a bird's eye view. And then, you know, he was he understood and he did it. And then when he came back, you know, he kind of looked at me and I said, OK, do it again, you do it three or four times. I want to get it. But so I'm actually down there. There were days where I was doing lighting for him. You know, we didn't his assistant didn't show up or whatever. So I'm down there in, you know, 40 degree water. holding a light as he's doing a macro sequence. But I'm, you know, kind of looking at the monitor too, you know, and trying to see what the scene looks like. we shot a scene with Alewife, these river herring, that's actually a positive story of restoration in the Gulf of Maine. And my other DP. that we had, you I had shot this from my cover story for National Geographic. So I knew the logistics. We went to this river, the herring were running, the alewife were running. you know, I said, well, I get in the river here and he's a very shallow water. mean, he's most of his body is out of water. He's got the camera under, but the monitor could be over. So I'm, you know, sort of in this twister position where I got one leg on a rock and another leg on another rock and a hand on his shoulder. And I'm looking at the monitor and, you know, and I'm saying, you know, move it a little bit way there's a ray of light coming in here or we're trying to capture things. So I love the visual part of it of course and maybe my deficit is that I see things in a still frame a lot of times and I need to be a little more motion oriented but nonetheless it's all fun and the producing is what I'm used to doing and then the visual part certainly is too so it all comes together for me nicely.

Christian: I'm so glad you explained that because I am insanely curious about the actual machinations about how that all comes together because I mean, how the heck do you direct underwater? I've always wondered that. How do you light underwater? it just seems all so complicated and magical to me. I just watched these nature documentaries just incessantly to try to figure out how the heck you guys do these things. So we're gonna get to that in a few minutes. Right now, I wanna give the introduction to sea change, and we're gonna just dive into this documentary series that you're doing because it's super fascinating. All right, so let's talk about this. Sea change, the Gulf of Maine, a NOVA special presentation explores a body of water that is warming 97 % faster than the global ocean. And what that means for the Gulf of Maine, for the animals, for the jobs dependent upon it and the millions of people along its shores and may serve as a preview of what could happen worldwide due to climate change. So this is Sea Change, a three -part special series on PBS Nova that is starting July 24th. And right away, I'm gonna start with the tough questions and we're gonna step away from the filmmaking just a little bit because I have to tell you, I really enjoyed, I watched the first two of this series. And I really enjoyed it. It was well shot. I thought it was incredibly interesting. I learned a lot of new things that I actually always wondered about and didn't know. And so I learned a lot. It did everything that you hope a documentary would do. However, at the beginning, I almost just part of my brain shut off because this clearly was about, you know, the earth warming and climate change and humans are responsible and what are we gonna do? This climate change is now affecting everything and if we're not careful, it's gonna destroy, you know, the habitat and affect everyone. Now, that is all true. I actually believe all of that. I know that we have been a part, you know, a participant in climate change happening. I also think Climate change just happens as part of natural life and it's happened over billions of years of our earth. But it's happening, it's happening and it's real. But we hear it all the time. It's almost become background noise now because as many documentaries, nature documentaries as I watch, they are all talking about. you know, this climate change in order to convince us that climate change is happening and it's going to affect not only our natural environment, but it will ultimately impact us, which is what you're saying here. This is going to impact our lives, what we eat, what we can't eat, et cetera. Now, so part of me was like, okay, yes, I know that message, which is why I think I took in all of the stuff that I didn't know. But I want to ask you, why is it so important to get out that message of climate change and everything is going to hell in a handbasket when we hear it so much already?

Brian Skerry: Thank Well, that is a really important question, Christian. I'm really glad you asked it. Let me offer some context that I have my perspective that I've learned throughout 47 years of exploring Earth's oceans and trying to tell stories about this planet. We live on an ocean world. We live on an ocean planet. It's often been said, and we've learned in school, that about 72 % of Earth's surface is ocean, is water. But I think an even more important statistic perhaps is that 98 % of Earth's biosphere, 98 % of the livable, habitable planet where life can exist on Earth is water, is ocean. If we look at Earth from space, we see that instantly that we not only live in this beautiful blue jewel floating out in the darkness of space, but we live on an ocean world. Scientists have told us that we need to protect 30 to 40 percent of Earth's oceans to have a healthy future. What does that mean, a healthy future? Well, every other breath that you take, no matter where you live, if you live in San Diego or Maine, where I live, or Nebraska or the middle of the Sahara Desert, every other breath that you take comes from the sea. It is the greatest carbon sink on Earth. We know about forests and rainforests and plants, how they process carbon and give us back oxygen, which is very true. But the ocean is the greatest carbon sink on Earth. It takes in more carbon. gives us back more oxygen. Today, we have only protected maybe 5 % of Earth's oceans, depending how you describe protection. So we're a long way off from that 30 to 40%. And we've actually expelled so much carbon into the atmosphere that we are changing the ocean's chemistry. It is like a sponge that can absorb no more water. And this is the ocean that is having a difficult time processing carbon now because we put so much out there. We've burned so many fossil fuels that the ocean is becoming saturated and something known as ocean acidification is occurring. And that means that the pH levels of ocean seawater are rising because of that carbon, which makes the ocean acidic. And when ocean becomes acidic, the ocean becomes acidic, it erodes all of these things that live in it. So coral reefs that are made of calcium are eroded. All of the animals that have seashells are eroded. These baseline sources of protein like pteropods and copepods and krill, these tiny little animals that giant whales and seabirds and everything else rely on for nutrition are eroding. So it is a domino effect because of these anthropogenic climate change actions that we have created because of the burning of fossil fuels and methane and all these other things that we're doing. So that is sort of the pretext for what's going on. And as a visual storyteller, what I'm trying to do help people understand, viewers, audiences, understand what does that mean? As you said, there may still be a lot of people out there who either don't believe that humans are responsible for this or that they think it's something that's gonna happen a long time from now, some sort of natural geologic process. or that it's not happening here where I live. It's somewhere in the poles and the Arctic and the Antarctic, but it's not gonna affect me. But it's affecting you right now today. mean, there was a hurricane barrel and hit Texas. And they're saying that this is an anomalous, right? It's warmer. Those sea waters around there are warmer and that the strength of the hurricane and so forth. So we're seeing this stuff right now, but we're seeing it in the Gulf of Maine. So this project, Sea Change, was... created because The latest science is revealing that this body of water known as the Gulf of Maine and let me describe where that is. The Gulf of Maine is not just off the coast of Maine in the United States, it is a body of water that stretches from Cape Cod, Massachusetts in the south up through the Canadian Maritimes through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick in the north. eating. So it straddles two countries, a number of US states, and it is a body of water that in no small way. fostered the colonization of America, the Basques, the Portuguese, the French came over in the 14th century, the 15th century to this North American continent because of codfish, because of the bounty, the richness of bounty that was in the ocean in these. Gulf of Maine waters, they thought it was limitless. It built the aristocracies, the codfish aristocracies in Massachusetts. There's still a codfish over the state house in Massachusetts. built empires. Yet today, we are at 1 % of codfish levels. We have fished out 99 % of them. And that's just one of the anthropogenic stresses, but climate now is the biggest stressor that's happening. So this place is warming 97 % faster than the rest of the global ocean. And it's due to things like Arctic glaciers in places like Greenland that are melting, introducing fresh water into the ocean, changing the currents. that are very precise, you know, in the Gulf of Maine, for example, the reason it's been such a proliferation of life since the last ice age in the Laurentian ice sheets retreated, the reason it's been so rich is because it had all these sediment bottoms, it had a rocky coast and... in Maine, had sholey sandy coast on the western coast in Cape Cod. The eastern edge was the continental shelf where you had these nutrient rich upwelling currents bringing all this cold nutrient rich water. You have the Gulf Stream coming up from the south, the Labrador current coming down from the north, and a counterclockwise current in the Gulf of Maine that, you know, it's like making a perfect cake or a perfect recipe. You have all the right ingredients. Now you have to mix them perfectly. You get seasonal stratification because it's in a temperate location in New England. You get four seasons. the ocean turns over and you get this explosion of life. But now those currents are shutting down. The Labrador current, which brought the cold water down from. Canada is now much weaker because of the freshwater and because of the melting glaciers. It's changing the density and the Gulf Stream is having a greater influence. So it's basically this giant bathtub that you've turned off the cold water faucet and it's just cooking. And this has serious implications for species and for humans. So I can get into that, but I've been talking for a few minutes. So I'll stop for just a moment.

Christian: Well, I I will say what you did was cause me to, like I told you, I learned so much about Maine. I didn't know about Maine. I knew where it was. I didn't know where the Gulf of Maine was. I didn't know all of those things that you just described. I didn't understand where to find clams or where they lived or what they looked like. I didn't understand. how much those clams and those fish and all of that influenced the life and the culture and the economics of the upper Massachusetts and Maine and all of that area and how much it's affected things now. I didn't even know what lobsters looked like as babies or how they laid their eggs or even that they laid eggs. I didn't know all those things. they were fascinating, the fact that I could see a tiny little infant lobster in its beautifulness. It made me care about those things for sure. And so it educated me in ways that I needed. And I did learn about what that water warming does to all of those things and not only how it impacts creatures there, but also how it impacts us ultimately, which we truly, you would think that would motivate us, you know, to care even more, which I don't know why it doesn't. But, you know, and the other things that you did do is you gave hope with the people that are trying to conserve and trying to study and learn more. And you introduced us to some incredible characters. What I loved about your documentary series is that you picked out some people to talk with who are absolutely fascinating. Fascinating and adorable and you just love them and you wanna hop on a boat with them or go dig up some clams with them. just was, the characters were great. So I did love that for sure.

Brian Skerry: Well, you know, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. And you you get to something that I should obviously mention that, you know, with with sea change, it we had to approach it as kind of a blue chip natural history documentary when it came to the wildlife stuff. You know, we had to film. alewife and these little fish in rivers and we had to film sea birds and terns or puffins and lobsters of course and seals and all you know all of these different things that we had to approach in the sort of traditional blue chip way but sea change also is a people's story as you just pointed out you know whether it's a scallop diver or a Native American clamor who's trying to stop the invasive species of little green crabs that are coming in and eating the baby clams before they can grow big. then it had to be a documentary about this threat of climate change, which is a little more sciencey, of course, and we're trying to explain why this is happening and what the consequences means. It means that... you know, there are invasive species that are thriving now because of the warmer water that the native species are no longer there. They're disappearing. We're losing kelp forest. You know, we interview Doug Rasher, a scientist who's been studying kelp forests in the Gulf of Maine for over a decade and shows this steady decline from south to north as the water is warming and those kelp forests are going away and that's critical habitat for all these various animals and so forth. there are people's stories which I think is what audiences relate to or we are a storytelling culture, right? I mean, I will believe you if I'm sitting with you over a cup of coffee and you say, hey, you know, I saw this, I know this happened. And then you know, somebody shows me the science to back up what you saw. And then we have the visuals here. Somebody can show you a film that says this is what's happening. Now you've got this trifecta that I think is very powerful in terms of affecting awareness and change, ideally. You know, this is a, it is a regional story with global implications. What we are learning in the Gulf of Maine, this very industrialized region that, you know, as I say, in many respects built the early days of America, you know, the Gulf of Maine and in the 19, whatever it was, 50s, whatever, Clarence Birdseye, you know, they figured out flash freezing on ships. So all the codfish was turned into fish sticks. I remember my mother buying fish sticks at the grocery store and eating those as a kid. Well, a lot of that came from the Gulf of Maine. It fed this country. This is a very innovative region. It's an economic powerhouse. You the richest fishery in America is the Maine lobster industry.

Christian: Crazy. Yeah.

Brian Skerry: hovered somewhere around $600 million annually for the last several years. However, there are serious threats. Climate change is impacting those lobsters and it's not just the warm water that's gonna make them march up to Canada, which is likely happening. But there's other things, those currents that are changing that I described. The first 30 days of a lobster's life is as a larval lobster, various stages, and they float around for 30 days up in the water column, and they historically get deposited close to shore in a cobblestone bottom where they have a high likelihood of recruitment. They have a high chance of growing to be a big lobster because they can hide from predators. But now, because the currents are changing, scientists think they're being deposited in deeper water offshore where they may not make it to a high chance of recruitment. They may die before they get to be an adult. They're also the thing that they eat. The predominant food that a larval lobster likes to eat is something called a copepod. which are comprised of 72 % lipids, these rich fats that help them gain weight and become big lobsters. Well, there's a mismatch now from the time that the copepods appear. The lobsters are still showing up in like say April, May or something, but The copepods, which used to show up at that time of year, now are showing up in January or December because the water is warmer. So they're not getting their nutrition. And even the copepods are not all 72 % lipids now. Their percentage of fat is reduced because of the warming water. So there's all of these factors. some of it, it's easy maybe to glaze over, but that's why with the visual storytelling, we've got people out there who can articulate these they're seeing it, whether it's a scientist or a fisherman, they're seeing this stuff and then we have the visuals to sort of support both of those things.

Christian: Yeah, well, there is no question that the message comes across very clearly. And I think it was important for me that you led with the people, because I did find the people fascinating, endearing. I really liked them all. And I hurt for them because their living was impacted. And you could see how hard they worked and how much they had been affected since they were young. and even more so how it impacted their children and the next generation. I love that you paired the fathers with the sons and you showed that generational impact. So it was super well done. It did also leave me feeling very discouraged in that. What do we do? You know, I can do things on a very small level, of course, which I do try to do. I can do do things with my vote, which I do try to do. But at the end of the day, our country is divided in half. And, you know, we are stuck in a I don't know, in loggerheads for for how major change is going to happen. And so hearing this, that's why I'm saying hearing this climate change message over and over again is true.

Brian Skerry: Yep. Good. Well, you know, yeah,

Christian: but it feels overwhelming and after a while it's hard to listen to because you just want to throw up your hands and say, don't know what else to

Brian Skerry: Yeah, you're right on the money as usual and I don't disagree with anything you said. I think for me, and again, for some context, the 26 year career with National Geographic Magazine, there has been sort of evolution in my storytelling. In the beginning, I just wanted to do adventurous things and stories about animals that I was interested in that I thought maybe other people would be interested in. And I was very siloed. I'd do a story on whatever, great white sharks or sea turtles or whatever. And over the time, I had the luxury by working with many different scientists and parachuting into their worlds. All of sudden I began to see the three dimensionality of this world and how everything is connected and that the leatherback sea turtles were feeding on jellyfish in the same place that Mola Mola were doing their thing or that whales were doing their thing. And I saw... that this beautiful machine, our planet, our universe, that everything is connected to everything else. And I believe, you know, we're obviously intimately connected to all of that as well. So my storytelling evolved to where I started doing stories about environmental threats to the planet. You know, in 2004, I did my first big cover story for National Geographic. It was about harp seals, the beautiful little white seal pups. And I went into it initially just wanting to do a pure natural history story above and below the ice. at this snapshot of the life cycle when they are mating and courting and pupping and so forth. But I realized that even then in 2002 and 2003 when I was working on that story, that climate change was a big issue, that the pup mortality rate was increasing because of the decline of sea ice, that they didn't have a stable platform to nurse from their mothers and they were falling into the ocean before they were ready and they were dying and therefore that was gonna be a big threat. So I focused on that and then I did a global fisheries cover story about the problems of industrialized overfishing that we had taken 90 % of the big fish out of the ocean post World War II because we got so good at figuring out where the fish were. And so I did a lot of these, what I would call doom and gloom kind of stories where I tried to balance the celebratory with the issues, but there's pictures of sharks being finned or dead sharks in nets. But I think people mature enough to be able to handle that. can look at those pictures. We can look at pictures of conflict zones, Ukraine or wherever, and understand what's going on and make informed decisions based on that journalism. It's very, very important. But I also realize that people protect what they love. So I don't want to lose sight of that. So even with Secrets of the Whales, which was a magazine story, a book, and a documentary series, it wasn't overtly about conservation at all. It was about the latest and greatest science that was revealing that whales have deep culture like humans. You know, they have singing competitions, they have parenting techniques, they have feeding strategies within the same species like humans. You know, you like a certain kind of food if you live in France and you know, if you live in America, you're eating something different. But we're the same. species, DNA, you know, is the same thing with whales. So my hope was that people would see the planet through the lens of culture with another species and want to protect those whales because they have babies like us and their, you know, mothers mourn when their orca mother is carrying a dead calf on her head. those were the kinds of things I want to do. But with sea change, I feel that, know, again, is as despondent as we can become about the situation in the country or the world or whatever. You know, we have two choices. We can throw up our hands or roll up in the fetal position in the corner and, you know, just resign ourselves to defeat or we can do what we do. We are storytellers and we have a tool. can present truthful evidence to people. And in my case, it's it's that trifecta. It's the personal stories, I can tell people what I'm seeing out there, what I've seen over 47 years, I can present the science and I present the video or the stills or whatever it might be that support those other two things. And let people make informed decisions. And if you're a trusted brand and you know, PBS in this case is a trusted brand, National Geographic is a trusted brand. And, you know, I feel good working with trusted brands that are putting forth my stories, my messages, our collective stories, the team, and let people make those decisions. I think we do feel helpless. There are things individuals can do, but you hit it on the head. Voting is a big part of it. mean, governments can enact marine protected areas. In the entire Gulf of Maine, there is not a single no -take marine protected area. There's not one. And here we are. It's a valuable area. It's a rich economic area, supports the country, Yet we don't have a single place when scientists are saying we should protect 30 to 40 percent of Earth's oceans. So, you know, the message here is that we don't give up, that we find ways to pivot. know, there are fishermen who are augmenting their wild caught fisheries with aquaculture, they're farming kelp, they're raising mussels in, you know, in shellfish farms and so forth. they're finding ways to maintain that economic supremacy and yet recognizing that there's a problem. And I think we have to be able to do both at the same time and make informed decisions about who we elect and who is gonna make our decisions for us at the federal level.

Christian: Well, what I love is I did love that you did give that hope of people that do come together and care enough to say, it doesn't really matter what the politics are because the politics may or may not change. We may or may not have control over that, but what do we have control over? We have control over what we do right here in this mudflat. We have control over coming together as a group of people to care about these birds. We have control over what we can study and the information we can put out there. We are humans and we can solve problems. So let's come together and solve these problems. So I did love that hope that you gave again, the people that were solving those problems were endearing and creative and I was so thankful to learn about them. We are over time, but I cannot go along anymore without asking you some specifics how you filmed some of these things because I'm dying to know. You talked about the lobster and the scene where this mother is carrying her babies for, I don't know, months on time underneath her tail, stuck with her little, I don't know what they're called, but stuck to her, yeah, her swimmerettes. And then she finds a rocky place and she drops them there. So how the heck?

Brian Skerry: Thank you. You're the swimmer, Edson. Yeah, wait. Yeah. So all of the

Christian: So how the heck, A, do you know where she's going to be and where she's going to lay them? How do you have a camera there ready for her to do that? How do you get that close up? It just baffles

Brian Skerry: Right. Well, it's a great question. And the answer is that, first of all, with all the natural history, we're doing extreme diligence, we're doing a lot of research. And again, you know, in this particular case, this is a region that I grew up in, you know, I've been diving these waters for over four decades, I know where to go to see things, I've talked to divers, even for the last 26 years running around the world for National Geographic, I wasn't diving in New England as much. I have a lot of friends and colleagues and divers and other photographers who were seeing things. So I'm sort of plugged into those networks. So I know where things are happening, but I've been working on this project in one way or another for four years. So I'm out there in my own boat diving in places and coming up with nothing a lot of times, but other times finding things and then, you know, being nimble, being able to go out on short notice when the weather is, clear and we can get out. mean, this was one of the real obstacles in this project was that the weather up here is bad. Climate change is actually making it worse. We're getting a lot of rain events that we never used to get. And that means the rivers are running off all this muck and stuff that makes the visibility out there where we're trying to shoot in the ocean really poor. You some days it's like swimming in coffee. So there's all these obstacles. So the bottom line to answer your question is that we're doing a lot of research where we're going out day after day and working these subjects. So whether it's alewife or birds or seals or lobsters or green crabs or whatever it might be, we're working it repeatedly. We're finding these places through research and exploration. And then we're going in with great camera teams. I would say, and I don't know the exact number, but I would say the ratio in terms of our natural history shooting, I would say probably 95 % was all done in the wild completely. There were a couple of scenes One of which was the lobsters with the eggs that we that was impossible to do underwater We were working with lobster. I mean in the wild we were working with lobster scientists who said that you know a lot of that happens In caves like or sort of little rocky dens. There's no way you could get in there You're not gonna even know if the female is there with eggs and so forth so we recreated those in captivity under the guidance of scientists at a laboratory in Maine so for those where you you describe the eggs on the swimmer at the tail and releasing that that particular scene was done in captivity but maintaining authenticity with with the actual situation that occurs in the ocean based on

Christian: Okay, well, all right, so that was recreated. However, my point still is there are so many of them done in the wild. I mean, I could name birds where a special little bird was swallowing the wrong fish because it couldn't swallow it because it was the wrong fish that was supposed to be there. And you caught it right at that moment. So there are so many where, you you already have a camera there in the wild.

Brian Skerry: That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian: where something happens that's exactly what you need. How do you get the camera where you want it to be when you need to capture a thing?

Brian Skerry: Well, this just takes time. know, Christian, I mean, we we invest a great deal of time being out there in the field. I would camp out for weeks. And again, I want to give a huge shout out to the researchers. I describe what I do often as parachuting into the world of these people who have dedicated their lives to knowing the behavior of these animals. So in the case of the birds, these were terns, common terns, a real bellwether for climate change in many places in the ocean. And yeah, they're used to feeding their chicks. slender bodied silverfish which they can easily swallow and now because of warming sea temperature, know the water is raised in temperature, those native species are not available anymore. So they're going out and grabbing these, I wouldn't necessarily call them invasive species but there are species like butterfish we're not abundant here, but now they're moving in from the south and they're silver, but they're wide bodied. So the parent doesn't know the difference necessarily. They see a silver fish, they go out and grab it, bring it to their chick, but the chick can't swallow it. It's too big to fit in. Yeah, so they're either choking or spitting it out. So we're spending weeks out there or our cameramen are and trying to, you

Christian: It's so sad.

Brian Skerry: acclimate themselves to these bird communities, putting up blinds or working with the researchers who have established blinds over the last 10 years. So we're waiting, we're using long lenses, we're waiting for the right moment when the parent comes back with the butterfish and the light is right and the angle is right. And we can't really move, we can't walk into them because we'll scare them. So we have to be completely invisible. with patience and time, usually you can get what you need.

Christian: Yeah, so a lot of patience, a lot of time, a lot of research. I mean, because, and then you find surprising things. I was stunned that a peregrine falcon can't catch a bird and yet a seagull can catch the same bird. Who would have thought? Who would have

Brian Skerry: Right? Yeah. Yeah, I know the sandpipers up there, they're just flying around in these massive flocks and you got a Falcon that you think is the supreme predator of the air, master of the air and they can't do it. And then this lowly seagull is getting one after another. yeah, it's kind of disturbing.

Christian: Yeah, or that a bird would eat a bird. I never do that. I was very sad to find that out. Yes. But as you can see, was very, you know, made a big impression on me, your series. And I do hope that people will take time to watch this. Let's, I know it's going to be on PBS Nova. People are going to listen to this podcast all over. Where are they going to, how can they find this series? It starts July 24th, but how can they find

Brian Skerry: Yeah, your local PBS station, it'll be international actually. It's distributed internationally, but certainly in the United States, it's on every PBS channel. will be available. See Change, as you said, dropping on July 24th. I think there is also a streaming option as well. So if you can go to pbs .com, you should be able to find See Change on there and stream it, even if you don't watch it on television.

Christian: Okay, and if people wanted to learn more about Brian Scary, where do they go?

Brian Skerry: You can certainly go to my website, bryanscary .com. I'm also on social media, so I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth, I'm posting about new projects and things that are important to me.

Christian: Wonderful. All right, now it is time for everybody's favorite segment, which we love to call DocuView Deja Vu. Now we asked you to bring one of your favorite documentaries that you would like to recommend to everyone and you've worked on so many. I'm sure you've watched so many. You've referenced several before earlier, but what did you pick?

Brian Skerry: Well, I had one in mind and I'm still going to mention it. It's a natural history documentary that was done by a friend of mine. It's called Billy and Molly. And it's about a guy in the UK who befriends a river And it's a wonderful story of this guy sort of coming around to this otter's point of view. It's done by, directed by my friend Charlie Hamilton James, also a Nat Geo photographer who did a marvelous job. It's a great human story. think it'll warm people's hearts and make them very happy. But I also wanted to squeeze in, I watched one last night. It just debuted on HBO and it's about Stevie Van Zandt. It's called Stevie Van Zandt Disciple. And Stevie Vanzant, course, the great guitar player for the East Street Band with Bruce Springsteen and actor in The Sopranos. And I actually stumbled upon it yesterday. It was at Tribeca, I guess. anyway, on HBO now. it's just fantastic. mean, there's so many other people with Joan Jets in it and Jackson Brown and Paul McCartney and all these great things. But talk about a guy who just never quit. so much I learned. I thought I knew a lot about Stevie, but boy, it was wonderful.

Christian: That's awesome. Thank you so much. I love it that you brought two because I didn't bring one today. So you brought one for me instead. Yeah. Listen, Brian, it has been just wonderful to have you here. You have been a boatload of information and I just loved learning from you today and I look forward to seeing more of your works. I do hope you'll come back in the future and talk to us a little bit more. I didn't even get to, I don't know, half of my other questions, so we have plenty more to talk about. So thank

Brian Skerry: Alright, we can have one of mine. Well, thank you very much, Christian. It's been a real pleasure and I'm grateful, be happy to come

Christian: being Thank you so much. All right, everybody, this has been Documentary First, where we believe everybody has a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it. Bye, everybody.