Brian Skerry

Brian Skerry is an American photojournalist and film producer specializing in marine life and ocean environments. Since 1998 he has been a contributing photographer for National Geographic magazine with more than 30 stories to his credit, including seven covers. In 2021 Skerry won a Primetime Emmy Award for his role as producer in the miniseries, Secrets of the Whales.

Skerry was born in Milford, Massachusetts in 1961, and grew up in Uxbridge. Skerry began SCUBA diving in 1977, at 15 years old and received his first SCUBA certification in 1978. He has stated that he was drawn to the water from a very young age and was always fascinated by ocean documentaries, along with the movies Jaws (1975) and The Deep (1977)

After studying at Quinsigamond Community College, where he earned an associate degree in Liberal Arts, he went on to Worcester State College earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications Media in 1984.

Skerry worked on a diving charter boat based on the coast of Rhode Island from 1982–1992, taking divers out to explore New England shipwrecks. His early photography focused on marine life and shipwrecks. His first published photograph was in 1984 in The Boston Globe newspaper, an image of a shipwreck in Boston Harbor. During the 1990s he published photos and wrote stories for a variety of scuba diving magazines. His first book was published in 1995, Complete Wreck Diving, with co-author Henry Keatts. In 1996 he was the first to photograph a living Oarfish, an animal that inspired sea serpent legends. In 2015 Skerry was named a Nikon Ambassador (United States).

In 1998 Skerry received his first assignment for National Geographic. In a 2021 article in The Maine Magazine, Skerry recalls Bill Curtsinger, one of the first underwater photographers, turning down a National Geographic magazine photo shoot of the 1717 pirate shipwreck Whydah Gally, buried in the sand off Cape Cod. Curtsinger turned down the job due to a scheduling conflict but put in a good word for Skerry, who in turn, took the story assignment. Skerry had his photos published in the May 1999 edition of National Geographic.

Skerry has been credited with more than 30 stories for National Geographic, including seven on the front cover of the magazine.^a The subjects of his stories have included species such as harp seals, squid, right whales, Leatherback sea turtles, bluefin tuna, dolphins and coral reefs. Other stories have featured locations such as the Southern Line Islands, Ireland, Marine reserves of New Zealand, the Phoenix Islands, Japan, the Mesoamerican Reef, and in his home state, the Gulf of Maine.

In 2016 National Geographic published three consecutive stories photographed by Skerry about sharks. While on assignment for National Geographic on September 1, 2016, he photographed U.S. President Barack Obama snorkeling in the waters off Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which lies within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. It was the first photograph ever taken of a President of the United States underwater.

Secrets of the Whales was a multi-platform project Skerry created for National Geographic in 2017 about the science of whale culture. He credits the work of Canadian whale biologist Shane Gero as his inspiration for this project. Skerry proposed the project to National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Television and National Geographic Books and each division approved their respective project.