The Videographer Who Seeks To Preserve Our Oceans And Their Inhabitants

Patrick Dykstra isn’t afraid of being swallowed by a humpback whale — but he is afraid of what climate change might bring about.

- Hillary Kang

Patrick Dykstra talks about his near-death experiences too casually. The nature videographer has swum alongside “all manner of sharks” sans cage and been lunged at repeatedly by a humpback whale in Norway. While navigating the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the peak of its civil war, he not only managed to dodge guerrillas — accompanied by an armed escort of 15 soldiers to photograph gorillas in the region — but also filmed two volcanic eruptions, one from “a close enough proximity that the soles of (my) shoes melted”.

He displays not a hint of fear for prodigious creatures or natural disasters that might so easily overwhelm even the best among us. Instead, what Dykstra truly fears is what humans can do — specifically, to the earth and its oceans.

“People tend to think of the ocean as a vast area that can absorb anything humans do to it, but that simply isn’t the case. Everything humans do has a major impact on the ocean,” says the 41-year-old award-winning cameraman.

“In just the past 20 years, I’ve seen major changes — plastic bottles and trash in places that were once pristine, healthy coral reefs that are now dead, areas full of life that are now barren. I’ve personally seen whales and manta rays entangled in discarded fishing gear.”

That’s why Dykstra does what he does: to show others what’s out there in the world’s oceans and why they’re worth preserving.

His latest project is Animal Planet’s