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 The National Geographic Blue Holes of the Bahamas story is out and appeared in the August 2010 edition of the magazine. The project took over a year to complete and involved several trips to the Bahamas in order to film and photograph the caves and its treasures. I was the photographic assistant to Wes Skiles, who took incredible images through the trip. A couple of my images made it onto the NG website too, which is super exciting!
In December 2008 and December 2009 I joined the team on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas to shoot still images and video for the National Geographic Blue Holes story. The series of caves we dived and photographed easily fall under the 'most incredible caves in the world' category. To put it mildly, I was blown away.
On top of checking out the beauty of the caves however we were there to document the research of a group of scientists led by the extraordinary Kenny Broad. We were surrounded by a most knowledgeable group of scientists from across all fields from microbiology and geology to biology and paleontology, who were all working on their own projects throughout the course of the assignment.
Watching this diverse group of scientists complete their research and discover so many new and incredible things about the caves of the Bahamas was quite remarkable. The experience really opened my eyes to the more scientific aspect of cave diving. In this case cave divers were an essential part of the scientific team, as we ventured deep into the caves, we were often the eyes and the hands of the scientists and recovered many samples for their analysis throughout the project.
The best part of the project was actually picking up a copy of the August 2010 National Geographic and enjoying the story and photos in print. It is difficult to imagine how many hours of work went into producing the story and just how many folks were involved in making it happen, suffice to say it was very much a team effort. For me it was a truly awesome experience to see it all come together and I'm glad, as we should all be, that Geographic continues to support such expeditions and research.
The article Unraveling the Mysteries of the Bahamas captures my first experience cave diving in the Bahamas and the thrill of being involved with a project chock-a- block with scientists from every discipline.
You can download my image that made it onto the National Geographic website as a wallpaper. The photo features Brian Kakuk with one of the crystal stalagmites inside Ralph's cave.
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