From space, the earth is a blue planet. In the cause of protecting the seventy percent of it that is water, it has become popular to argue for “the economic services” provided by the ocean, in the language of the powerful that excludes nature as “external” to the real business of the world. We talk about its capacity as a giant carbon sink; as the source of over twenty percent of our protein; as the livelihood of twelve percent of the world’s people. It provides the cheapest transport for our global industries; its coral reefs are the nursery for fisheries; and its animals sustain sport and a vast floating tourist industry. The new term, “ecosystem services,” is better, but it still positions us humans at the centre, those “served” by the ocean.

What is it like to experience the living ocean for its own sake? To see all this up close is viscerally to feel the urgency for, and scale needed to protect the world’s oceans. Throughout my life, I have had a lucky intimacy with them: as a child aboard steamships between continents, and as an adult as a free-diver on coral reefs. Since 2007, I have been able to photograph their wonders: on the surface, in the air above them, and underwater, on a single breath of air. This series has been produced from my archive of ocean pictures, spanning the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Caribbean Sea.