What the Water Gave Me

A retrospective on the life and career of Photographer and Marine Biologist Gaelin Rosenwaks

The ocean has always been the driving force of my life. 

Being in the water and near the ocean is where I feel at home and settled. I've been lucky to fuse my love of science, the sea, and conservation into a career as a scientist and storyteller — studying, exploring, documenting, and protecting the ocean. It has been a dream with both challenges and incredible moments. There is always something new to learn and explore, which feeds my endless curiosity for the natural world.

I began my career doing research on krill aboard an icebreaker specially equipped to work in Antarctica. I spent two months on the ship doing the most physically difficult work I had ever done in extreme temperatures, with some of the largest seas I could ever imagine when we crossed the Drake Passage, knowing there was no way out once we left the dock. It was early winter with only a few hours of sunlight and endless sea ice once we reached Antarctica. Moving through a frozen ocean on the ship was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The sound of the ice breaking under the hull was deafening and the ship shuddered as the ice broke. Despite the challenges of being disconnected from the world and physically exhausted, I left that expedition completely hooked on both sea ice and expedition science.

After Antarctica, I headed to graduate school and began studying bluefin tuna

The most beautiful fish in the ocean and extremely valuable in the sashimi market — with a single fish valued upwards of $1 million. I was able to unite my love of fishing with science. We caught the fish and brought them on deck where we surgically implanted electronic tags to learn where the fish were going in the ocean. This was all to understand how to keep these fish in the ocean in the face of overfishing. While I loved this work, witnessing the decline in the bluefin tuna population inspired me to take the next step in my career, which was to help tell stories of ocean science and conservation through photography and film. I picked up a camera and never looked back.

I started my company, Global Ocean Exploration, and ended up in the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean aboard another icebreaker, the Coast Guard Cutter icebreaker Healy, where I was documenting the work of the scientists working to understand our changing planet. I was now wearing the hat of a storyteller and excited to be back doing polar science. We drilled ice cores, took samples, and built a picture of the ecosystem to learn what may happen in the absence of sea ice. 

Staring into the eye of a sperm whale is a powerful experience.

My first interaction with a sperm whale was when I was a toddler. A young whale has stranded on the beach near my home in Long Island, New York and a group of veterinarians decided to bring this whale into a nearby boat basin to get a closer look at him and determine if they could help him. I was not even two years old when my mother took my brother and me to visit this whale, but I will never forget the first time I looked into its enormous eye, and he looked back at me. At that moment, I was hooked, and the ocean and its conservation has been my life's mission since. 

Flash forward a few decades and a career of expeditions, I knew it was time to reconnect with sperm whales so i headed to Dominica to do just that. I've been working with sperm whales for the past 5 years to understand and document the incredible matrilineal family units in the waters of Dominica. Mothers, grandmothers, daughters, siblings, all living together as families taking care of one another. It's been remarkable to witness and document the tender moments between mother and baby sperm whales for my book. 

Perhaps the best day of my life, certainly the best gift I have ever been given

A giant squid tentacle gifted to me by a sperm whale, the ultimate way to be welcomed into their world. I don't know if the whale thought I looked hungry or just wanted to share her latest meal, but she came up directly in front of me and gave me this 20-foot-long tentacle. Mind-blowing does not begin to describe it. 

We see many amazing animals but don't always realize how close the photographer must get to capture the image. Sharks are one of my favorite subjects, from blue sharks off Montauk to great white sharks of Mexico. 

The ocean is the life force of our planet. We need to think about the ocean as our neighbor, something to treat with respect and care, not as a mirrored surface beyond the shoreline. I see signs of humans every time I'm on the ocean, whether it's a balloon floating, other single-use plastic, or worse. Some are easy problems to solve by disposing of your trash properly, others more difficult. Everything we do on land impacts the ocean and marine life. We have the power to keep the ocean healthy. 

Follow along for more @gaelinrosenwaks | gaelinrosenwaks.com