My vision & mission

Orange in the Blue was never just about taking pretty pictures underwater. It’s about changing how people see the ocean — and the animals most of us were taught to fear.

Vision

Years ago, my college research looked at how the media portrays sharks, and the very real damage that portrayal does. It opened my eyes, and I’ve never closed them since. My vision is to help flip that story: to use photography and videography to show sharks and the ocean the way they actually are — wild, beautiful, and worth protecting.

I grew up glued to documentaries like Blue Planet, and one scene — an open-ocean bait ball, with sailfish and sharks tearing through it — has stayed with me my whole life. That feeling of being completely floored by the ocean is exactly what I want to pass on to someone else.

Mission

Day to day, that means getting in the water (or out on the boat), capturing the ocean as honestly as I can, and then sharing it as widely as I can. I’m still learning on the job, and I’m building this into something that can stand on its own two feet — but the point was never profit alone. I want to make sure that whatever I’m doing puts some good back into the world.

Conservation & charity

I believe that solely chasing profit is no way to make the world better, even when the intentions start out good. So conservation isn’t a side note for me — it’s the whole point.

I’ve put that into practice on the ground. While I was living in Exmouth, Australia, I volunteered with a local ocean charity — helping out at first, then organising and leading beach cleans, and working with the local primary school on “three for the sea”: every time you go to the beach, you find three pieces of rubbish and put them in the bin. A small habit, but a real difference — especially in the kids who took it home with them.

I’ve also stopped eating fish and seafood, and I’m working towards going vegetarian. I won’t pretend that’s easy — sushi was my favourite food — but I can’t in good conscience keep propping up an industry I know isn’t sustainable.

The bigger dream is a shark charity of my own: a boat to run research and respectful tours from, backing the kind of shark science I’m working towards myself (one day, a Masters and a PhD), and opening doors for people who haven’t had the easiest route into marine biology — including the hands-on fieldwork my own generation lost to the pandemic. And somewhere down the line, a documentary that does for someone else what Blue Planet did for me.

I don’t want to do any of this on my own, either. I want to do it with Sara, and with other people who care about the same things. That’s the plan — and it’s only going to grow.