shark2
Three hundred miles off the Costa Rican coast is an island. It’s beautiful, and it’s one of the most difficult places to find comfort that I’ve been. I was there for months at a time, surviving on coconuts and rice. Every day I’d swim out as far as I could and dive down in search of the hammerhead sharks that school by the thousands just off shore. I was there for National Geographic, covering a story on shark poachers that would sneak into the protected waters.
Editor’s Note: Ben Horton has gotten around. As a National Geographic photographer he’s covered every sort of adventure from diving with sharks off the Costa Rican coastline to dogsledding on Ellesmere Island. And he wants you to go, too. And if you don’t go to the arctic, or the Brazilian rainforest, maybe his imagery will inspire you to go somewhere you’ve been meaning to for a long time. Even if it’s just to the other side of the state you’re living in. Horton gives us the story behind nine of his favorite images from the last half decade or so. Images that represent a deep love of our planet, and protecting it.