Profile: Cristina Mittermeier

With biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution and other challenges facing the natural world and humanity, hope often seems to be in short supply.

But Mexican photographer Cristina Mittermeier believes now is not the time for people who care about the planet to give up. “Hope is like a life jacket,” she says.

“You need to hold onto something: to ideas, to a community, to little mantras that remind you that you have to get up tomorrow and keep trying. There’s no choice.”

Born in Mexico City in 1966, Mittermeier (or Mitty) grew up in Cuernavaca and studied Biochemical Engineering in Marine Sciences at Mexico’s ITESM University.

She worked for two decades for Conservation International and in 2005 set up the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP).

In 2014, she co-founded SeaLegacy with her partner, the National Geographic photographer and filmmaker Paul Nicklen, their non-profit organisation using photography and film to promote the protection of the world’s oceans.

SeaLegacy 1, their 62-foot, custom-built, expedition catamaran, recently spent time operating in New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea and Raja Ampat in Indonesia, highlighting ocean issues, such as at-risk coral reefs in Australia.

Mittermeier’s work has featured in global publications, including National Geographic and The New York Times. She has also appeared in National Geographic shows.

Her new book, Hope, presents work from across her career: a much-needed reminder of the wonder and beauty found on Planet Earth, from Antarctica to Ethiopia, with images of wildlife, natural landscapes and Indigenous cultures.

Here, she talks to Graeme Green about the challenges of ‘visual storytelling’, a close call with an Australian giant, and a recent ‘alien’ encounter…

AP: Your new book is called Hope. How do you remain hopeful in difficult times for the planet?

CM: I dig deep. I try to remind myself of the work that others are doing, because they’re not giving up. Sometimes I think hope is a bit like singing in a choir – when you feel like you have to catch your breath and take a couple of days off, the music doesn’t stop.

Other people are still singing. You just have to lean on that community, and also remember that they’re expecting you to show up at some point.

AP: You’ve said before that you’ve been criticised because you don’t show enough of the destruction that’s happening to nature. Why do you focus on beauty, rather than the damage being done?

CM: We’re not the first movement out there. The Civil Rights movement, which was led by Martin Luther King, is the blueprint I try to follow. He didn’t start his speech by saying “I have a nightmare.”

We have to show the future we want to achieve. If we forget what we’re fighting for, then what’s the point? My job is to remind people that it’s still out there, that it’s still beautiful, and it’s still full of potential. We just have to show up for it.

AP: The book has a section focusing on Indigenous people. What do you think people around the world could learn from Indigenous people?

CM: I’d say that we are on a ‘spaceship’ that’s very complex, but it has everything we need to survive - it’s our home. But the people who are piloting the spaceship have no fucking clue what they’re doing.

They would be very wise to surround themselves with Indigenous people and biologists to tell them what to do. With Indigenous people, it’s not a ‘hocus pocus’ knowledge that they have.

It’s a system of values that’s pretty universal across the globe and that goes back thousands of years about how to tread lightly on a planet that has finite resources. It’s so simple.

AP: There are photos of the Kayapó from the Amazon rainforest. What drew you to their story?

CM: I landed there almost by accident with Conservation International. I was such a young photographer when I first went in 1994, when a large hydroelectric dam, Belo Monte, was being proposed to be built there. I was sent as a rookie photographer to cover these people who were going to be displaced by the dam.

I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I tried but I fucked up. I didn’t have the courage to take the hard-hitting photos that were needed. I was too shy. There was a woman who had lost her child. She was mourning. She dug up the body of the baby, and she was hitting herself with a machete - she was covered in blood.

It would have been a very powerful photograph, and I didn’t have the guts to take it. I learned the lesson: if you want to do the work that we do, being journalists, observers and witnesses, you have to have courage and do things that are uncomfortable.

I like the Kayapó so much because they’re so well-organised politically – they’ve found their political voice in the government of Brazil and they’ve mounted a resistance to protect their lands and their way of life.

AP: You do a lot of underwater photography with creatures from manta rays to sharks. Sharks, of course, are facing a hard time around the world. Do you enjoy being in the water with sharks? 

CM: It’s not like I love being in the water with sharks but I’m always in awe when they’re present.

I can’t lie – I am scared of great white sharks. When we were diving in southern Australia, they were constantly on my mind. I was thinking “Oh my god, it would be such a bad headline.” But most sharks are shy, not as big and not interested in humans, so they’re fun to dive with.

AP: Have you ever had any close calls with marine creatures?

CM: I was almost killed by a Southern right whale in Australia in 2023. We were in the Great Australian Bight, off the south coast. It’s illegal to get in the water with southern right whales because they’re so endangered.

But we got a special permit from the government of Australia to film with mothers and calves.

I’ve been in the water with hundreds of whales, but these are really wild animals. They’re not used to seeing humans. They’re so aggressively curious - they really want to see what you are. It was a little terrifying, because they’re so enormous.

I used to think I’m so lucky and that I have a special energy that means animals relax around me. But, no, it’s not true. A mother got spooked when her baby got too close to me, and she threw her fluke at me.

She would have decapitated me, had I not been horizontal. It was a bit of a wake-up call, like, “Ok, the ocean is not necessarily my friend. The creatures are not necessarily in love with me.”

Those moments make you realise just how fragile humans are and how out of place we are in the ocean.

AP: Is underwater photography particularly challenging, when you have to balance the scuba diving with the photographic work?

CM: Underwater photography has been the steepest learning curve of my life. Job Number One is to avoid drowning.

You need to be an accomplished swimmer, very comfortable in the water, and to intimately understand your equipment before you even consider looking through your viewfinder to make photographs.

AP: SeaLegacy works on ‘visual storytelling’ to help ocean projects and causes around the world. How much impact can photography and film have?

CM: I’ve always felt storytelling is so important. But the funding is not there. For anyone who wants to make a documentary or dive deeper into these stories, it’s incredibly difficult to fund journalism and storytelling.

As important as it is, it’s very challenging to do. My hope is that people will invest in people like you and I to tell the stories of our planet.

AP: Do you and Paul work well together?

CM: It’s been so lucky that Paul and I have complimentary skills. I’m very good at the conservation puzzle, trying to figure out who the players are and what the levers are, and he’s the most extraordinary expedition leader.

He always has a knack - from more than 20 years of working for National Geographic - of putting us in the right place to grab the visuals and do the interviews. I don’t know how he does it.

AP: You recently spent several months working in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Did you have any memorable underwater encounters?

CM: Because the high surface temperatures made it challenging to find large schools of fish, night diving to discover the smaller creatures that emerge in the dark became our main focus.

I’ve never done much macro photography, as it requires special lenses and lights, and immense patience, but I decided to dive in and gear up.

I have to confess that the complexities of macro photography almost had me in tears. The necessity to hold perfect buoyancy, while trying to focus on a miniature octopus or shrimp was really challenging, but I persevered. 

One night, I had my head stuck inside a reef waiting for a small critter to emerge from its hole. When I looked up to find my dive buddies, I realized they’d moved on without me and I was diving completely alone in the pitch blackness.

One of the advantages of diving rebreathers is the extended bottom time, so I decided to continue, and I went back to looking for macro life. I sensed something was watching me.

I was startled and I turned my camera towards the intruder lurking just over my shoulder, only to discover a small squid looking at me. It was also startled and swam away, but it immediately came back. 

The lights on my camera seemed very exciting, so it started flashing colours. Its skin, covered in special cells, called chromatophores, shifted colour and seemed to be lit from within.

When it got a glimpse of its reflection on the smooth surface of my dome, he really got excited. Its fins were dancing wildly and his eyes seemed to grow larger and more vibrant. Everything about it made me think of aliens and extraterrestrial life. 

Weeks later, I still have to pinch myself at the beauty and complexity of this small animal. Alone in the deep ocean, I spent the most fascinating half-hour in the company of a beautiful creature most people will only ever known on a plate, covered in mayonnaise. 

AP: What did you make of Raja Ampat?

CM: There’s something very special about Raja Ampat. Diving with large schools of fish or reef and oceanic manta rays is a dream for any diver. But the reality is worrying and shocking.

In the short time we were there, from October 2024 to March 2025, we experienced unusual water temperatures that led to the bleaching of the reef. There’s a complete lack of sanitation services - every village and town just tosses their trash into the ocean.

The result is an endless river of plastic trash being carried by the currents all over the archipelago.  

AP: What are you and SeaLegacy working on in 2025?

CM: It’s defeating to focus on negative stories, so our plans for 2025 are focused once again on telling the stories of the heroes on the frontlines.

We’re spotlighting the work of several organizations, from the Coral Gardeners in French Polynesia to the Suntai Watch siblings cleaning ocean plastic on the rivers and beaches of Indonesia to the Young Ocean Explorers in New Zealand, who introduce and educate almost one million school children in New Zealand.

Shining a light on the work of these heroes, who are holding back the avalanche of destruction, is our attempt to inspire people, to raise funds for their work and motivate more people to participate in any capacity possible. 

Hope by Cristina Mittermeier is published by Hemeria: hemeria.com/en/product/hope-cristina-mittermeier. For more, see www.cristinamittermeier.com and Instagram @mitty.