Pixiq

Three fatal attacks this month by apex predators – a polar bear on Svalbard and a couple of shark attacks off the Seychelles – raises the question: How safe is it to invade the territory of dangerous animals? Having worked as a wildlife photographer for some four decades, I have never taken undue risks, although I have had two close shaves. 

The first in 1972, whilst based on a schooner in the Galapagos, was when I decided to snorkel with a buddy. Before entering the sea from the boat, I checked that the beach master or bull sea lion was at the far end of the beach. Later I discovered the closest living thing was the sea lion steaming full pelt towards me. As my adrenaline surged, I powered my fins like never before until I reached the edge of his territory when he turned around. I was well aware that tourists in the Galapagos have had chunks bitten from their legs by sea lions.

Eleven years later, I was in Sri Lanka with a Japanese TV crew who were making a documentary about me, but they missed the most dramatic event. My driver stopped so we could listen to birdsong in the early evening. Suddenly, a bull elephant charged out of the forest towards us with his ears flapping and dust flying. It was impossible to start the engine and reverse rapidly in retreat; fortunately, when the elephant was within spitting distance of our jeep it chickened out and veered off into the forest. In those pre-digital days, I decided to push the 100 IS0 film to 200 – even if I would not be around to see the images, someone else might enjoy them.

Elephants are not carnivores, but they are quite capable of overturning a vehicle or trampling you underfoot. I once met a South African wildlife photographer who had laid down in the path of a charging elephant to get a wide angle WOW shot. He was lucky to survive being trampled. Personally, I feel no photo is worth risking my life. 

The recent tragic fatality of a British teenager killed by a polar bear whilst camping on Svalbard in the Arctic was not unique. Polar bears are dangerous. Normally they hunt seals from pack ice, but climate change is resulting in the ice melting earlier. If bears become stranded on an island they get very hungry and will attack anything that moves.

Brown bears attacks can also be fatal.  In October 2003, a bear in Alaska's Katmai National Park killed Timothy Treadwell – a bear 'researcher' – and his girlfriend whilst camping. This was just three months after I had spent a week wading ashore daily from a boat, so I could photograph the bears feeding on estuarine flats. In December 2003, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, Vitaly Nikolayenko a Russian naturalist / photographer, was killed by a bear despite having lived with the bears for 33 years. Bears are unpredictable and the urge to eat becomes overwhelming.

It is not yet known what kind of shark killed two people – a fortnight apart – on Anse Lazio, one of the most beautiful beaches anywhere, on Praslin island in the Seychelles in August 2011. Waste dumped off boats anchored in the bay may have attracted the shark into shallow waters.

Steve Irwin, the Australian naturalist and television presenter (known as The Crocodile Hunter, from his appetite for handling crocodiles and getting up close and personnel to dangerous animals for his TV programs) was unlucky to die on 4 September 2006 after a stingray bark pierced him in the chest while filming on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Despite being a vegetarian, the hippo is responsible for more human fatalities in Africa than any other large animal. Second only in size to an elephant, hippos spend most of their day relaxing in water where they can remain submerged for more than 10 minutes. A small boat drifting over submerged hippos is likely to capsize if the animals suddenly surface to breathe. A mother hippo gets extremely aggressive if anyone comes between her and her offspring, who remain in the water whilst she grazes on land at night. Alan Root, the filmmaker, had a hole ripped in his leg during an underwater hippo attack in Kenya's Mzima Spring.

Male hippos actively defend their territories that run along the banks of rivers and lakes and it is here that people tend to get killed by hippos, which are capable of running at speeds of over 20 miles an hour.

Anyone invading the territories of such dangerous animals are taking life-threatening risks, but the odds of being killed or injured are extremely small compared to encountering the most dangerous organism on earth – the mosquito. Causing the spread of malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever, mosquitoes kill more people than any other organism.  Malaria alone kills over a million people worldwide every year.

Wildlife photographers will always have an irresistible urge to photograph dangerous animals, but by being knowledgeable and responsible, they are less likely to meet an unhappy end than tourists who blunder unknowingly into the wrong place at the wrong time.  However, close contact with any dangerous animal must carry a degree of risk – as indeed does driving on a motorway.

Nowadays technology provides us with safer ways to gain a scoop shot than lying in the path of a charging elephant. BBC filmmakers' have had considerable success using a rock-like 'Boulder cam'  to disguise the camera to gain the first footage of lions from inside a pride's den; while white 'Snow cams'  that blend in with the ice were used for remotely controlling cameras to film polar bears.