One Wild Life

Let’s begin in 1972, when The Godfather ruled the box office, Trudeau senior was PM, and Paul Henderson scored the famed winning goal for Team Canada in Moscow. That was also the year Paul Nicklen’s family moved from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to a row house in Iqaluit on Baffin Island. Nicklen was four. The family later settled in Kimmirut, a small hamlet that at the time had around 200 people, a place without television or telephones.

At age nine, he climbed behind his own snowmobile and travelled out on the ice with his father and the Inuit hunters. Temperatures dropped to -40˚ Celsius. “I was learning how to be tough,” he says.

He was also soaking in the area’s stories—such as the Inuit myth of Qalupalik, the sea monster, who was said to snatch kids off the ice and eat them. The story served a purpose to keep children safe in a land with no swimming pools, where children often couldn’t swim, reflects Nicklen.

He remembers the time as a rich mental journey. “And when your head is so full of dreams and visions, and thoughts, and stories, and colours, and shapes and patterns, and I really thrived on it. My brother hated the North. He didn’t like it at all. He thought it was hard, and he couldn’t wait to get out of there, and I couldn’t wait to just spend the rest of my life there.”

Growing up among the Inuit, he learned to listen more, talk less and not to brag. In Kimmirut, a traditional, sharing community, it was considered rude to knock on a door. The custom was to walk in. There would be blizzards that engulfed buildings in snow. “I remember our dog disappeared for a week in the storm and came back eventually. And you just learn to be tough. It’s just a really tough environment. And I loved it. I thrived in that.”

This early trial-by-ice made him “really good at being miserable.” He experienced frostbite with the regularity that others get a sunburn—perhaps 50 times. He learned patience from the Inuit. “Most of all, what I learned was storytelling, and I love it how they’re very much a visual culture. They tell their stories through lithograph paintings, through soapstone carvings… we would carve things out of snow and ice.” When they weren’t carving, they’d be telling stories. That’s how it was in the North.

Obsessed with the ocean

Nicklen’s schoolteacher mother, an accomplished photographer, kept a darkroom during his childhood, which fascinated him. She eventually lent him a Pentax K1000 during a family trip to Italy when he was 15. When Nicklen first stepped onto the UVic campus at age 18 to study biology, he was still struggling to get his photos sharp and in focus.

At UVic, he discovered scuba diving and became obsessed, strapping his gear to his motor bike and driving to dive sites. He spent time at Bamfield Marine Station, where he was known for scuba diving and underwater photography. He recalls his biology professor, Dr. Arthur Fontaine, praising his underwater photos. But he did not earn good marks. He wishes he knew then that he has Attention Deficit Disorder. Still, Nicklen graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1990. When he was contacted by UVic in 2017, he thought they might be revoking his degree. Instead, he was to receive an honorary doctorate.

“That was a proud moment. Because, OK, I followed my path. They’re not recognizing me for my grades… I have made some sort of a difference. I am very proud of my relationship with UVic.”

Alone in the Barren Lands

After graduating, he went north to work as a biologist, but found himself managing hunters’ rights. Disillusioned, he arranged to have a pilot drop him off at the Barren Lands, a largely unpopulated area of vast tundra between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. He spent three months on his own, hiking and canoeing among the musk ox and the moose, trying to photograph tundra wolves.

Nicklen wanted to give a voice and a face to the species most affected and at risk in our changing planet. When he returned to civilization, he had photos and a purpose. Along the way, he was mentored by top nature photographers Flip Nicklin and Joel Sartore. He began shooting regularly for National Geographic.

Nicklen’s photos are close and intimate with nature, evoking emotion and awe. He tells stories about wolf pups playing or narwhals in formation or elephants sheltering their young—but he’s not afraid to punch us in the gut. It’s difficult to forget his image of a polar bear stumbling along Somerset Island, ragged and starving. Or his famous photo “Ice Waterfall,” with its sinister beauty and devastating message of relentless climate change. The image was taken in Svalbard, Norway, just 800 km from the North Pole. It was 20˚ C that day and everything was melting. It was beautiful to look at—but gut wrenching, reflects Nicklen.

Over the years, he has collected duffle bags of awards, more than 30, including the UVic Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2017 honorary doctorate. “If people have seen a photograph set in the polar regions that filled them with awe, a photograph they shared with the person next to them, and remember to this day, it was probably taken by Paul Nicklen,” said Dr. Kieka Mynhardt, when giving the oration before Nicklen received his UVic honorary degree.

He also earned the Order of Canada, BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and the World Press Photo for Photojournalism. In 2019, he became the youngest person ever inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame.

He loved working for Nat Geo, and did so for 20 years. But he wanted to do more.

Meeting Cristina, creating SeaLegacy

Our story shifts to Washington, DC, at the headquarters of National Geographic, where Nicklen meets Mexican-born photographer and marine biologist Cristina Mittermeier. Nicklen recalls her as a beauty dressed with Mexican flare, long skirt and jewellery. She remembers him in plaid, corduroy, a cute Canadian.

At the time, she had started up the International League of Conservation Photographers. He agreed to join a group assignment documenting environmental changes to the Yucatan Peninsula. The two ended up diving together, taking photographs together and eventually becoming partners in life and in conservation, founding SeaLegacy in 2014.

Mittermeier and Nicklen were honoured together in 2018 as National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year. Nat Geo made a documentary about the couple as part of their Photographer series, following their conservation efforts in the Bahamas to protect the area from oil drilling—particularly the beds of sea grass, which Nicklen dubs “the lungs of the Bahamas.” As Mittermeier said in the documentary, “The only way you can change the world is with stories.”

Mittermeier and Nicklen have figured out how to make the attention economy work for conservation. Nicklen tries to earn the trust of the people who follow him, before sharing the darker side of animal suffering.

“And it’s by doing all the beautiful, engaging work, that you gain the trust of your audience,” says Nicklen. Then when he shares a heavy image, such as a starving polar bear or the slaughter of dolphins with drift nets off California—the audience is with him, because they trust him.

He posted a graphic, bloody image on social media of dolphins slaughtered in the Faroe Islands, which gained attention from celebrities like Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, ultimately drawing 110,000 comments. The rise of Instagram means they can “beat the drum everyday” as Nicklen puts it. There’s no waiting for a magazine to publish.

While his photos sometimes show animals and the environment in peril, they also reflect his deep love for his subjects. Nicklen reviewed 2.5 million images to create his new book, Reverence, which he describes as a love letter to the planet.

“I think there's so many dark moments on my journey of seeing animals suffer, and that this book is just a love letter to the planet and to the people of the planet to fall in love with Earth again and all these creatures and these habitats and these ecosystems.”

Our story shifts to the damp, moody beauty of the pristine Great Bear Rainforest, with moss carpeting the ground like green fairy hair. That’s where Paul Nicklen photographed a spirit bear, a rare subspecies of the black bear, with the help of Gitga’at guide Marven Robinson. The image of the giant bear landed on the cover of National Geographic in August 2011. The publicity, alongside with the work of the Gitga’at and Kitasoo/Xais’xais First Nations, helped put a pause on the Northern Gateway pipeline.

Nicklen recalls going to visit the Elder Helen Clifton, BSW ’93, of the Gitga’at Nation in Hartley Bay, where they sat down together. She held up the article and smiled and said, “We did this together.” He says remembering this story, and their success, sends chills down his spine. “It just feels so good to have somebody of such stature and respect in their community, such an Elder and a leader, and to know that I played a small role in that.”

For him, a powerful image needs to go on and work in service to the ecosystem forever. “So that’s what I am proud of. A lot of these images are really sort of representations or ambassadors of their habitat or ecosystems, and if you can protect a spirit bear and keep oil out of the area, you’re protecting everything—from helping First Nations protect their land to all the creatures that live below the spirit bear—and around them.”  

At home in nature

Collecting these wild stories has sometimes meant facing situations that would terrify most of us. Nicklen has been among thousands of bears, including being charged by a grizzly. A southern right whale, which is longer than a BC Transit bus, steamrolled him underwater. It was trying to shove him in the sand at 12 metres deep. “I think it was just playing,” he says.

He was attacked by a leopard seal in the Ross Sea in Antarctica, which he deems “a case of mistaken identity.” The seal had been looking for penguins. “And it came flying out of the water, and they knock them over like bowling pins, and so I had this 600-pound seal, approximately 20 miles an hour, fly out of the water and hit me in the face and just lay me out, knock me down, knock the air out of me. I was pretty banged up.” The seal instantly knew it had made a mistake, says Nicklen.

A curious four-metre-long tiger shark knocked his camera housing from his hands and tried to swim off with it. “It wasn’t trying to be malicious. What’s amazing for me about wildlife is all the mistakes I’ve made. I’ve made so many mistakes around them, and they’re so forgiving. These animals just they look at your stupidity, and they just sort of casually walk around you…” He believes no photo is worth stressing out an animal. Animals are very consistent and predictable in their behaviour, he observes—humans, not as much.

Nicklen is at home in nature, whether that’s in BC’s coastal ecosystems or walking in Antarctica among 400,000 king penguins.

He feels most lonely in hotel rooms, in big cities, after giving a talk. That’s when he feels anxiety and fear creep in. “It’s when I’m in nature, I’m never lonely. I always feel complete and full and satisfied and satiated and good.”

He calls himself “semi-retired,” though he just spent six weeks in Africa taking photos and doing conservation work. The late actor and activist Robert Redford had led them to the Africa project. Nicklen, also a videographer and pilot, is spending more time creating fine art, and has several shows coming up. His most recent expedition for SeaLegacy was to Indonesia.

“It’s whatever feeds my soul, and that’s why my new book coming out, Reverence, is a collection of 30 years of work, of my most emotive images that just really make me feel an emotional reaction, and I hope the reader does as well.”

How to hang on to hope

Working on a story 25 years ago, he couldn’t get one scientist to go on the record to say climate change was caused by humans. So, he takes heart from the little conservation wins as they happen. He just bought 700 acres in Africa to donate back to conservation and the animals. Mittermeier uses the analogy of a choir—when one singer tires, or is discouraged, another can take over so the conservation choir keeps singing.

He describes Mittermeier as a “one-woman wrecking crew.” She is always willing to help and fight for a cause. “I’m so proud of her, and she’s my biggest inspiration.” They are involved with over 300 other organization and initiatives. They lend their voice, their images, their power of storytelling.

The two can deliver a social media punch with their combined followers of more than 10 million people. They often collaborate with other organizations and can help push an issue to the finish line faster, and they’ve helped move the needle on grizzly hunting, ghost nets harming dolphins and they kept oil out of the Lofoten region in Norway.

The couple have a home on Vancouver Island, where Nicklen is hanging out with their two dogs, whom he fondly calls “spoiled, entitled rescue brats” as the labs snooze near his feet on two circular beds. He wears a ball cap with a Canada maple leaf on the front and a zip-up fleece. His familiar photo “Face to Face,” of a polar bear peeking in a cabin is visible—the only one he’s ever put on a wall.

“I’m proud of my pictures, but I don’t ever look at my pictures and go, wow, those are good… I think nature is perfect. It is so refined and it’s beautiful and powerful. And I think that all I’m doing is it trying to do it justice and capture it, and I often fail.”

The perfect day for him is a moment to slow down, breathe, look around and have gratitude. He does a hike every morning up a local mountain with the two dogs. He appreciates a hammock, a book and a lake. Perhaps the tough kid raised on Baffin Island can sometimes take a moment or two of ease. He has a message for young people starting out.

 —Jenny Manzer, BA ’97 

This article appears in the UVic Torch alumni magazine.

For more Torch stories, go to the UVic Torch alumni magazine page.