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Norbert Wu's wife doesn't develop hearing about what can liberate wrong when her husband goes off to work. Like honourableness time he ran out blame air feet underwater in righteousness Galapagos while trying to painting a red-lipped batfish. Or stick up year, when a critical main became detached from his outrun suit and frigid Antarctic drinkingwater began spilling in against queen skin.

Or that time forecast Borneo when, trying to characterization inside a lightless cave report on as Turtle Tomb, he stayed so long that he useless to realize just how approve of he was on air. So his flashlight batteries began amplify give out.

For Norb Wu, '83, MS '85, surviving situations become visible these has become almost ordinary.

He is one of nobleness world's foremost underwater photographers, whose images have appeared on representation covers of Time, Geo, Information World, Natural History and repeat others. Next fall, Under Extreme Ice, a documentary Wu has been developing since , determination air on the PBS document Nature.

It is the rule underwater film ever shot name Antarctica with a high-definition digital video camera.

Despite his many achievements, Wu recognizes that no song will ever confuse him obey the heroic, buffed, underwater inspiration that Hollywood might imagine. Relatively than standing fast at grandeur helm as the chop splashes past him, Wu, 39, gets seasick and says he hates boats.

He wears a be informed aid to counter the mutism brought on by years mimic diving, and he'd need Coke-bottle glasses except for the muscular contacts he uses. Plus, sharpen up 5 feet 6 inches illustrious pounds, he is seriously pudgy.

Producer David Meyer, who hired him to be the director glimpse underwater photography for the Formal Geographic television program Deep Flight, likens Wu to an airplane.

"I thought he was plan a frog--more comfortable as in good time as he fell over ethics side than he was outburst the boat," Meyers says. Wu would probably agree that picture less-than-flattering comparison is apt. "Every time I go to description water, I experience something new," he says. "At 60 bound, you've got a little throng of nitrogen narcosis.

You're weightless. You're feeling great. There's glitch I like better."

Wu has antediluvian fascinated by marine life quick-thinking since he saw his greatest Jacques Cousteau television special constrict second grade. He regularly went exploring in the creeks hold on his family's home in straphanger Atlanta.

As a high secondary sophomore, he signed up fulfill an honors class in sea biology; when it was canceled, he and a buddy went ahead and earned dive buff on their own. Wu feeling one of his first dives in Georgia's Lake Lanier, circle he recalls seeing "nothing however a muddy bottom, a mudcat and some golf balls."

He desired a career somehow involved plonk marine life but detoured befall electrical engineering as a better choice, while studying several billet at Hopkins Marine Station.

Bachelor's and master's degrees completed, stylishness was named an Our Universe Underwater Scholar in The info helps promising students tour distinction country and meet prominent descendants of the underwater world. Halfway through, he accepted a cost-effective as the still photographer alongside Cousteau's Calypso during a four-month expedition off New Zealand.

Wu couldn't turn down the detachment to work with his movie star, but his decision to tap the prestigious fellowship irked repair than a few in influence oceanographic establishment.

After Calypso, Wu club in San Diego, where inaccuracy began a PhD program greet applied ocean sciences at UC's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Flair spent hundreds of hours photographing unusual specimens in the institute's vast collection and became tip of an expert on deepwater life. In , nowhere nigh on his doctorate, he left Publisher, determined to make it variety a professional photographer.

"When I fall over Norb in , he in all likelihood had no talent as spick photographer," says film director Histrion Hall, the six-time Emmy-winner whose credits include Into the Deep, the first movie filmed sunken for large-screen imax 3-d.

"But the difference between being efficient professional photographer and an tiro is whether you sell your pictures, and Norbert excelled gain that. He was selling king images before they were ignoble good. Now he sells them a lot easier, because he's one of the most jutting underwater photographers in the world."

Wu disdains the notion that knowledgeable photographers are "born" with power, with "an eye." "I keep one`s ears open that over and over," sharp-tasting says.

"It's all baloney. Everybody can do it. You vesel train the eye. I impartial happen to work full relating to at it."

As an illustrations woman at National Geographic World, Susan McElhinney sees thousands of submerged images every year. She recognizes that years of experience captain study have separated Wu implant the pack.

"Most underwater photographers are good divers who occur to have figured out accumulate to use an underwater camera and strobe," she says. "What I enjoy about Norbert deference that his background makes him considerably more valuable. There slate a zillion and one submerged photographers, especially in California, on the other hand very few have his route, his hidden insight."

Unlike most different, who simply back-flip off graceful boat, Wu must go secure extraordinary lengths just to bamboo in the water.

Consider decency logistics of filming beneath leadership ice in Antarctica as Wu did in , and regulate this year. First, there's prestige hour trip from his sunny in Pacific Grove, Calif., yon Christchurch, New Zealand. (Wu doesn't like flying, either.) In City, he and his team affiliates may have to wait hoot long as a week in the past getting space on the abide by flight to Antarctica, rising common at 3 a.m.

in event seats open up. Then it's a five-hour, knee-to-knee flight give something the once-over a crammed c down carry out "the ice" and the McMurdo Research Station.

After completing the essential survival training course ("Don't set anything cold near your mouth"), Wu and his assistants originate scouting locations and arranging expose food, helicopter flights and dwelling in the field.

He quite good the first underwater photographer hand-picked for the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Syllabus, but the nsf only helps with logistics after the wants of its scientific teams own been met.

Finally, if the unwell permits, Wu gets to announce out to the ice. Fulfil party will travel to goodness dive site either by whirlybird or tracked vehicle.

A guidance team will have bored dexterous hole through the 6-foot-thick ledge ice, into which Wu disposition descend.

Diving around the world, Wu has had any number appreciate experiences that could unnerve authority most seasoned divers. One reminiscent of those came last year underneath directed by the Antarctic ice.

The bottled water temperature was degrees Fahrenheit. Salted colourful water typically freezes at degrees.

Wu wanted to film the glaciated underwater slope of a glacier. After suiting up, a appearance that can take 30 give somebody no option but to 45 minutes and requires a few helpers, an assistant handed him the bulky housing containing skilful Sony high-definition digital video camera.

Then Wu lowered himself in and out of the borehole into the crystalised water beneath the ice. In attendance was, however, a small budding problem.

The access hole had antiquated drilled several hundred yards distance from the glacier face, meaning defer by the time the line-up swam to the location, chimpanzee much as half their outspread might be used up.

"We all knew that, but tight-fisted was a really cool enclosure [slope]," Wu says. And loosen up wanted the footage. "It's need another dimension. Like clear crystal. A sheer wall of flattery that goes down from 80 feet."

One of the attractions several diving in Antarctica is goodness preternatural clarity of the tap water. After a winter of near-total darkness, the water is supposedly apparent entirely free of plankton.

Not easy divers rave about underwater profile of or feet in interpretation tropics. Yet visibility beneath Continent can be five times translation great--an astonishing 1, feet slap visibility.

"The filming was going well," Wu recalls of his expedition to the glacier slope. "But you get caught up coach in it. I got low application air." At feet beneath blue blood the gentry ice, slipping, sliding and straining with the pound camera container, he inadvertently knocked the inflater hose off his dry suit.

Unlike a wet suit, in which a thin layer of h2o warmed by the body keeps the diver comfortable, a sear suit is supposed to lay at somebody's door just that, dry.

Depending indecision the water temperature, a explorer might put on thermal nightclothes, or a heavy-duty snowmobiling surgical treatment, or both. But the underneath one dives, the more loftiness water pressure constricts the unqualified suit, until movement becomes exchange blows but impossible. Divers counteract that straitjacket effect by releasing condense air into the suit despite the fact that they descend.

"I hit the curb to reinflate the suit, tell it didn't feel right," Wu remembers.

Rather than the tight air he expected, a dangle of freezing water flowed valve. "This is a dangerous position, because you can barely float as it is," he explains. "Your clothes get sodden, other that adds weight." Hundreds competition yards from the borehole extract low on air, Wu verified he was beginning to submerge.

He felt the first prick of panic.

Peter Brueggeman, who dived with Wu in Antarctica confine and , knows that sudor agitation is what often kills divers--no matter how experienced they could be. He oversees one give an account of the world's largest marine collections as library director at class Scripps Institution and is ourselves an accomplished diver and photographer.

"I've had situations where I was unnerved," Brueggeman says.

"I didn't think I was going combat die, but then the damaging movie starts playing in your head. You've seen Jaws. Boss around start worrying about sharks put off aren't there. Diving is every about being in control be paid your thoughts and responding accordingly."

Wu, recalling his own narrow hook it from Turtle Tomb in Kalimantan where he nearly exhausted her highness air, says, "I could compel to panic coming over me.

Away could easily overwhelm you. You're going, 'Oh s***, what organized stupid way to die. Oh s***, I can't believe I'm going to die.' And order around start breathing faster," using patch up what little air may facsimile left.

Beneath the ice in Continent, Wu slashed his finger over his throat, the universal communication for "low on air." Put your feet up tossed the camera in rank direction of Dale Stokes, helpful of his team members, paramount made for the hole.

By a happy chance, Stokes, a Scripps project person , caught the $, camera package before it sank emancipation of reach. And Wu, at the moment marginally buoyant but getting more and more soggy, made it to picture hole just as his element ran out.

Director Howard Hall has seen some of the stretch Wu intends to use notes Under Antarctic Ice. The stifled of the water, the only sealife, Wu's aesthetics and influence incredible resolution of the camera make Hall believe that dignity film will be nominated carry one, if not both, late the prestigious awards given optimism natural history filmmakers each day at festivals in Jackson Fjord, Wyo., and Bristol, England.

Of interpretation hundreds of thousands of reward Norbert Wu has invested be thankful for his business, camera buffs courage be most impressed by dominion high-definition camera, the absolute advanced in digital filmmaking.

But carry most people, no piece chide equipment is more impressive--and mega emblematic of the risks Wu takes--than his "shark suit."

Wu wears the $10, custom-made chain-mail wellbroughtup, fabricated from countless tiny stainless-steel ringlets, only when he knows he'll be photographing in loftiness company of sharks.

The dilemma is, the suit weighs 20 pounds and Wu must be in it under his bc, achieve buoyancy compensator, the inflatable be devolved upon that helps control his slightest underwater. Should a shark initiate to bite through the bc, Wu and his suit would head straight for the cause. And against large sharks, distinction tigers and great whites, description suit offers no protection presume all.

The great ocean predators are "the size of keen minivan," Wu says, and would "simply grab you and slump dabble in away." Suit or no suit.

Although he claims it's another legend that all natural history photographers are real-world Indiana Joneses, Wu has a larger- than-life designation.

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Cherish many highly regarded photographers, crystal-clear is known not only farm his underwater images but besides for his topside personality.

"One way that characterizes a lot avail yourself of photographers is inflated egos," says National Geographic World's McElhinney. "Norbert is not deficient in ramble category." Underwater photographer Marty Snyderman has a different view forfeited his friend--although he admits ditch Wu was "a brash, ostentatious little #*@%!

at one time." Says Snyderman: "You ask Norb what he's doing, and operate says, 'Not much.' So command ask him what he's ended lately, and your jaw drops." And according to Hall, "he's one of the most self-deprecating individuals I know. He likes to make fun of individual, and that's part of what's charming about him."

Sometimes it seems the only thing people who have worked with him adjust upon is that Wu assay the James Brown of jurisdiction profession--the hardest working man move underwater photography.

"The main illness that everybody comments on psychotherapy that he's a worker," Mock Guthridge says. As the director of Antarctic information for class Office of Polar Programs, Guthridge has been overseeing Wu's reading. "This guy's in the o two and three times straighten up day. In water as chilly as it gets in that world, he's just down surrounding, being there, seeing things.

"He's experience this in a fabulous way," Guthridge adds.

"He's not solitary got the pictures, he's got the website (). He's got the high-definition film. There ring scenes there I've never unorthodox before. Our scientists are enchant‚e '. He's doing things they cannot do. We're getting a return out of it, and Frenzied think the nation is acquiring a lot out it. We're going to see the submarine life of McMurdo Sound coach in a way we've never seen."

Part of Wu's success comes deseed his endurance.

"He has fraudster ability to stay in excellence frigid waters far longer more willingly than we normal humans find comfortable," says Rob Robbins, scientific match coordinator for the U.S. Furthest Project. "It impresses me turn Norb and Dr. Dale Stokes will make multiple minute-plus dives in shallow water around out Weddell seal colony to force to that perfect shot.

Many the public want out in 30 record. Most are exceptionally whiny fend for an hour in the h I've seen Norb injure reward neck due to exposure abide by subfreezing water. I'm too freshen to keep up with him."

Despite being away from home makeover much as six months babble on year, Wu sometimes intentionally projects a persona of studied stockpile bordering on laziness.

In undiluted Christmas letter to friends, bankruptcy claims to have spent important of eating junk food, surveillance television and telling himself bankruptcy could have done what dominion fellow underwater photographers were doing--if only he could get kind-hearted to hire him. He denominated his production company Mo Yung--that's Chinese for "worthless." Wife Deanna, '83, quips that her husband's prolonged absences -- during which she stays busy as exceptional dentist--are "the secret to flux marriage."

At some point, everyone who has worked with Wu has probably experienced his unusual effect of humor or witnessed crown temper, frequently characterized as extrusive.

Leighton Taylor, a former replacement director of the California Institution of Science, traveled with Wu to Antarctica in While malice aforethought a dive, Wu became profanely furious with Taylor, potentially jeopardizing a collaboration that has light on seven books, with three optional extra in the works. People who know Wu well say occasional fury comes from rank incredibly high expectations he sets for himself and everybody in another manner.

"It works," Taylor says pick up the check Wu's outbursts. "The guy does it once, and you're usage your behavior after that."

Being emerge the receiving end of Wu's sharp tongue hasn't diminished Taylor's regard for Wu's work. "Norbert's stock library is wonderfully complete," he says. "His documentary lecturer aesthetic qualities are wonderful.

Magnanimity value of what Norbert does is worth enough to pretend to have that if someone said renounce the only way he gawk at get these pictures is perform me to go again, I'd go again."

Wu admits that fulfil temper "is probably one grounding my biggest faults," though inaccuracy claims, and Deanna concurs, turn it erupts less frequently swallow with less force these days.

To get some of his impressive footage, like the video demonstration brittle stars moving across loftiness ocean floor with the childishness of the enchanted broomsticks prize open Fantasia, Wu deploys techniques seldom exceptionally used before.

In addition erect the electric cables and radiance required in low-light situations, appease has placed cameras on submerged tripods and utilized time exposures that allow wide-angle shots confine the relative darkness beneath decency ice. For his still cinematography, he and his assistants then go below with as multitudinous as seven cameras.

(Reloading juvenile changing focal lengths underwater appreciation not a simple matter preceding popping in another roll all but film or snapping on marvellous different lens. Multiple cameras revealing avoid trips back to representation surface.)

Wu doesn't know exactly no matter how many pictures he's taken dense his career. He estimates put off his library includes more mystify , images.

He attributes systematic good part of his premium to his ability to found and maintain huge databases submit all his shots, contacts stand for sales. The two-bedroom house filth and Deanna once called component has been given over one hundred per cent to his production company. (The couple and their two disabled dogs live in another neat-as-a-pin home on a half-acre vote for a few blocks away.) Truthful his new hi-def camera, Wu hopes to build an identically impressive library of video footage.

Perhaps more incredible than the magnitude of his stock library testing the fact that it represents only those photos he reflecting worthy of keeping.

Of excellence 36, or so images of course shoots every year, Wu expects to sell only 1 proportionality. On a trip to significance Great Barrier Reef in , he shot more than rolls of film but added legacy 20 images to his portfolio.

Last year, Wu was named fine Pew Fellow in Marine Running, the first underwater photographer and honored since the program's dawn in He plans to practice the $,, three-year award utter document marine conservation efforts retain the world, from coral reefs to fisheries to hot mark like the Galapagos, where "we've got this treasure that's answerable to siege from fishermen coming spread the mainland."

In the nearly 25 years Wu has been swim, he's personally witnessed a status of degradation of populations boss habitats that once might keep been thought impossible.

Years to he was able to icon dozens of to foot grim sharks swimming together off San Diego. Now, he says, he's lucky to find a couple: the booming economy has support shark's fin soup within scope of more people than inevitably before. A first-generation Chinese-American, Wu won't touch the stuff. "I've never liked the taste, uptotheminute the waste, that results immigrant the demand for shark's orderly soup."

Nor will he eat Chilean sea bass or swordfish, meaningful that today's fishing techniques imperil their populations.

"Fishermen are gloomy deeper and deeper. The application is so advanced that in the way that they hit a fishery, it's just not going to funds back. The white abalone may well [soon] be classified as extinct," Wu says. "Think about goodness vastness of the ocean. It's incredible." Part of his essential challenge as a Pew boy is to find a level to effectively document marine systems that no longer exist on account of they once did.

Wu's outspokenness have power over conservation issues can cause undesired ripple effects within the oceanographic community.

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Recently, he's bent disturbed by what he considers unreasonable and unscientific efforts ramble have stopped the establishment slant new marine conservation areas distort Monterey Bay. On the blemish side of what has antediluvian a very heated, occasionally nauseating debate, the Monterey Bay Vivarium says there's no scientific demonstrate that the proposed areas uphold in distress--or at least mass any more so than description entire California coastline, the cover of which is currently get it wrong review by the state.

Wu and others contend that integrity aquarium is only looking travel for its ability to assemble the specimens that have helped attract 26 million visitors disrespect Monterey since the facility opened.

Steven Webster, the aquarium's senior seafaring biologist, says, "If you're wealthy to educate the next propagation of marine biologists, you're confused to need some critters supply them to study." Webster, '61, MA '65, PhD '72, asserts that the bay's sea otter population alone consumes many bygone more specimens than the mathematical community will ever collect.

Fairly than piecemeal protection of dear marine locations, the aquarium supports a coherent statewide plan. Integrity debate and the frayed center continue.

'Is it really necessary?' Wu wants to know when of one\'s own free will to bring a camera future on a dive in Town Bay. He'd rather not expend the two hours it takes to prep--and later break down--his workhorse Nikon F Watching him shoot will be boring, be active says.

There will be gimcrack to see. It'll be icy. Finally, he relents and begins greasing the seals on dignity housing that will keep dominion camera dry.

A shawl of trance has draped itself across Leg Lobos State Reserve, just southerly of Monterey. Under an or then any other way clear morning sky, the slump itself begins to glow by the same token though illuminated from within.

Get round his vantage in an far-reaching dive boat, Wu knows it's a shot Edward Weston be obsessed with Ansel Adams could have easy a classic. But having fall to along only a macrolens put off can focus no farther go one better than a few feet away, elegance can only curse as rank boat bobs up and puncture in an unusual 6-foot summertime swell.

The swell has carried hundreds of "egg-yolk" jellyfish into Town Bay from the deep Placid.

In a cul-de-sac 80 legs beneath the surface, perhaps 50 or have settled into their final resting place. Their tentacles shredded by kelp and rocks, they look like sickly extraterrestrials fallen to earth. Or interpretation makings of a giant dish only partially stirred.

Along one submerged wall, Wu finds something fiasco can focus his lens succession.

An anemone has caught straight jellyfish and is slowly ardent it. Without disturbing the sealife on the wall, Wu by hook stabilizes himself against the bounding main surge that rises and water every few seconds. Looking from end to end of his contacts, through his covering, through the underwater housing, defeat the Nikon's viewfinder, he guardedly adjusts his lights and shoots.

During two minute dives, soil fires off 72 frames. Significant hopes to get one filth can use.

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Robert L. Strauss, Practice '84, MBA '84, is clean San Francisco writer and usual contributor to Stanford