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Trade paperback ISBN:
978-1-4263-1520-6
Reinforced library edition ISBN:
978-1-4263-1521-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4263-1606-7
v3.1
Version: 2017-07-10
It was a warm night in May. I was walking along a beach in Trinidad (sounds like TRIH-nuh-dad), an island in the Caribbean (sounds like CARE-uh-BEE-un) Sea. It was almost midnight. The ocean waves rumbled and crashed onto the sand. Behind the beach, palm trees swayed in the damp breeze.
Suddenly, a few yards down, I spotted dark shapes on the sand.
Did You Know?
The temperature inside a leatherback’s nest determines if the baby turtles will be male or female.
They looked like huge rocks. But they were leatherback sea turtles! They were here to do something sea turtles have been doing for more than 100 million years. And I was hoping to shoot them. With my camera, that is!
My name is Brian Skerry. I’m an underwater wildlife photographer. It’s my job to take pictures of animals that live in the sea.
I fell in love with the sea when I was a child. I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. We lived about an hour’s drive from the ocean. I was always asking my parents to take me there.
When I wasn’t at the beach, I was reading books or watching TV shows about ocean life. I really admired the sea turtles. It was fun to imagine gliding with them through miles of deep, blue water.
When I was 15, I tried scuba diving. It was in my family’s swimming pool. I was sitting in the shallow end. I had the scuba tank on my back. Hoses attached to the tank would bring air to my mouthpiece. I’ll never forget putting that mouthpiece in and taking my first breath underwater. All I could think was, “Wow! I have discovered a whole new world!”