Two Worlds: Above and Below the Sea

Longtime National Geographic photographer David Doubilet has spent more than twenty-seven thousand hours underwater, often in pursuit of the images that have become synonymous with his name: over/unders, above and belows, or, as he calls them, half-and-halfs. Enabled by domed water housings, this technique offers the ability to be in two environments at once, and his first major book in twenty years, Two Worlds: Above and Below the Sea, shows those environments to be stunning in their beauty and fragile beyond compare. A whale shark yawns below fishermen, hoping for a krill handout. In the Caymans, a stingray glides as gracefully as the sailboat above. Tiny and vulnerable, a loggerhead turtle hatchling shelters in tangled golden sargassum. Like many photojournalists, the New York native began as a documentarian and was forged a conservationist by the changing planet. Two Worlds offers one hundred twenty-eight pages of lushly printed photographs, an afterward by astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan, and Doubilet’s well-earned and plainspoken message: Take a look at all this, and act.