Legacy Effort
Our purpose
What has been our Call to Action?
Chris was born in Africa with a passion for its wildlife and open spaces.
For the past 30 years he has worked with many natural icons but most notably the planet’s most famous super predator, The Great White Shark.
In 1996 Chris was the first person to discover and photograph the breaching great white shark phenomenon at Seal Island off Cape Town, South Africa. Through his photography, Chris was able to bring to the world’s attention for the first time, the most spectacular behavior ever showcased by the one of the Planet’s most Iconic predators in its 50-million-year tenure.
Over the next 22 years these shark’s incredible athleticism would become arguably the world’s most showcased wildlife phenomenon, appearing in countless documentaries, newspapers, books, magazine and social media. Both National Geographic and Discovery Channel have built franchises around them as well as appearing in famed Attenborough BBC documentaries such as Planet Earth, Life, Africa, Blue Planet and more.
In those 22 years, together with his wife Monique, they spent over 3500 days either on or in the ocean with these icons, not just in South Africa but all around the planet.
They collected data from day one in 1996 and up to the present. They witnessed over 10,450 natural predatory events, a number that exceeded by many folds all other known great white locations combined.
They learnt how, where and when the sharks hunted, and made many more discoveries that were world firsts. Most pertinently, they got to know the great white sharks as individuals and watched young sharks grow into full grown adults with incredible personalities.
Quite simple, they fell in love with them.
Then they began to notice a change. Slow at first, but undeniable … a decrease in their numbers.
Many of their beloved regulars were not coming back. They started to see shifts in their seasonality and they saw behavioral changes related to feeding. By 2014/15 the decline was suddenly precipitous and by 2018 the sharks were all gone from the Seal Island area.
From observing over 250 different great white sharks a year, and more than 800 annual predatory events, the sightings went to ZERO.
One can well imagine the shock of after just 22 years of being discovered at Seal Island, the great whites no longer returned.
50 million years is a lot to undo in just 22 …
Chris and Monique’s experience of discovering, and then losing great white sharks, mostly due to gross mismanagement of the ecosystem, has been a massive call to action to be the change they want to see.
For the past 22 years they have also travelled the globe extensively, visiting all seven continents on at least four occasions, focusing on seeing iconic wildlife and the planet’s most spectacular natural wildlife destinations.
As with the great whites, unbelievably they have seen similar catastrophic changes with their own eyes elsewhere.
They have truly seen what an incredible planet we live on, they have intimately engaged with its most iconic species, and through their experiences at the coal face feel an obligation to do what they can to help save what is left.
Where are we now?
Chris has been privileged as a wildlife photographer to have been afforded opportunities few, if any, have ever had. This has enabled him to capture some of the World’s most iconic photographic wildlife imagery.
The body of work stretches uniquely across the realms of Ocean, Air and Earth.
In 2020, at The Saatchi Gallery in London, Chris proudly launched a Fine Art collection, titled The 11th Hour, of his photographic life’s work.
The 11th Hour Collection consists of Limited Edition works that artistically celebrates the greatest icons of our planet, it highlights what we have lost, but as importantly, it also brings attention to the magnificence of what we can still save.
Using his work as a conjugate, Chris is able to tell a truly authentic and important story, visually and artistically rendered through limited edition art pieces, along with meaningful narrative.
Chris and Monique are able to highlight the threats facing our Planet and its most iconic wildlife species, but equally as important, they are also able to inspire individuals, corporates and the next generation to celebrate our planet’s remaining iconic wildlife and adopt new ways to sustainably co-exist and protect it.
Call to Action
Through the sale of Chris’s work as investment grade art pieces, all profits will go directly towards Chris and Monique’s legacy effort of purchasing land for rehabilitation, re wilding and habitat preservation as well as supporting select NGO’s.
Additionally, Chris and Monique are able to provide a bouquet of options for corporates to purchase biodiversity offsets that allow them to achieve goals and requirements for environmental responsibility.
What will this achieve
Preserving habitat is vital. It provides not only the natural environment into which indigenous species can later be re-introduced, but more importantly it buys time for the concepts of global sustainability and protection of bio diversity to gain traction.
If you preserve the habitat there is always hope.
Preservation of habitat, eco systems and associated biodiversity, both marine and terrestrial, is the single most effective way of sequestrating carbon and producing oxygen.
The purchase of biodiversity offsets goes directly to vital work being done by NGO’s who are preserving existing habitat and biodiversity, rehabilitating degraded land, rewilding projects and bridging the gap in the divide between human and wildlife conflict.
Philanthropic and Conservation Contributions to date
Tag and Release Program
Local Beach Seine Nets
1989 – 2015
As a teenager Chris initiated a program to save sharks and rays caught as by catch in beach seine nets in False Bay, Cape Town. Chris personally attended over 730 net deployments during which time he tagged or released more than 5000 sharks and rays during the above period which otherwise would have died.
Shark species include, Great white, Ragged tooth, Bronze whaler
Thresher, Hammerhead and Smooth hound as well as five different ray species.
Shark Free Chips campaign
2016 – 2020
An initiative to expose gross mismanagement and the ongoing plight of sharks in South Africa.
Through galvanizing public pressure and media attention, the campaign successfully forced the South African government to finally sign off on long awaited shark fishing regulations in South Africa which had been awaiting implementation for over a decade.
De Hoop Shark Research
2019 – 2021
Support given by the purchase of a research vessel as well as in field expertise to facilitate shark research to highlight threats being faced by one of South Africa’s flag ship marine protected areas.
https://sharkresearch.rsmas.miami.edu/research/projects/parks-for-south-african-sharks/
Proclamation of The Lower Potteberg Nature Reserve (LPNR)
In 2021 this reserve was officially submitted for proclamation of Protected Status.
Chris and Monique have self-funded the clearing of their portion of this reserves’ alien vegetation in order to conserve some of the world’s most critically endangered botanical biomes, including Eastern Rhuns Rhenosterveld.
With the support of neighboring properties, there is now have a significant area of nearly 1500ha under protection that also buffers the De Hoop National Park in the Southern Cape, South Africa.
Objectives of this project.
Protection of critically endangered botanical habitat comprised of four different biomes and restoration of highly sensitive intertidal habitat that borders the terrestrial component of the reserve.
Phase 1:
Submission of reserve for protected status and environmental stewardship with The Department of Cape Nature.
Phase 2:
Through the implementation of a Management Plan, the use of best practices will be applied for the process of rehabilitation and management of a protected environment, including the clearing of alien vegetation and erection of board walks to prevent further inter tidal habitat degredation.
Phase 3:
Link the LPNR up to the De Hoop Nature Reserve creating one large protected area allowing free wildlife movement across properties up to the natural boundary of the Breede River.
Donations through the sale of art works to various NGO’s most notably:
- Wild Aid
- Bushlife Conservancy
- The Zambezi Elephant Fund
- Mellon Educate
Awareness Raising and Public Speaking
Chris has spoken at approximately 50 charitable events and schools to raise environmental awareness as well as educate and inspire both current and future generations.
Wildlife and wild places are Chris and Monique’s greatest love.
Through their extensive personal experiences around the world they have become determined to be a part of the solution to protect biodiversity by using their narrative and powerful imagery to contribute towards meaningful change.
