Brooke Pyke

The Wonder of Wild Places

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I rolled into Key Largo, Florida, with a Nikonos II camera and a darkroom sink in the back of my Chevy van to figure out how to make a living as an underwater photographer. Things have changed since 1978, and underwater photography is not the novelty it was when I started. The passion that drives emerging talent toward international recognition remains much the same, but the path will inevitably be different.

This portrait shows the details of a Nembrotha nudibranch’s facial features as a small piece of plankton floats by at Raja Ampat, Indonesia.

This selfie is from my first encounter with an ornate eagle ray.

From a remote vantage in Western Australia, Brooke Pyke has grown her Instagram following to 242,000. She was recognized in 2022 by luxury watch manufacturer and patron of underwater photography Blancpain for their Female Fifty Fathoms Award, which “encourages women to share their vision of the underwater world, acting as a beacon of inspiration.” The recognition included a portfolio in their Ocean Photographer of the Year coffee-table book and an invitation to the Blancpain boutique in Perth, Australia, where she received a personally engraved 38 mm Bathyscaphe timepiece from the Fifty Fathoms dive watch collection. It was a heady start to a career that began just a dozen years ago when she was 21.

Pyke grew up near Victoria in southeastern Australia. The waters were chilly and more than a little intimidating for her as a child. She was afraid of the water until she was about 7 years old, but her dad would have none of that. He pushed her to try bodyboarding first and then snorkeling. She saw her first seahorse in Port Phillip Bay and forgot about being scared.

From then she spent her free time sailing, swimming, or jumping off the jetty. “Most Australians really are into the ocean,” she said. “Most of us live close to the coast, and it’s in our DNA.”

She was conflicted between horses and seahorses, for the equestrian pursuit of show jumping consumed much of her childhood. It wasn’t until after college that her fork in the road presented itself.

“If you had asked me years ago where I’d end up as an adult, becoming an underwater photographer would have been a surprise,” Pyke said. “I developed an interest in photography during high school and applied to study it at university, but I didn’t get in. Instead I pursued graphic design in Melbourne.

“After completing my design studies, a vacation in Thailand introduced me to scuba diving, a passion that led me to abandon my design career and become a dive instructor. The underwater world fascinated me, offering a sense of freedom and tranquility that felt right.”

An ocean-drifting sargassum frogfish swims near Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia, looking for the shelter of a raft of seaweed.

She and her sister traveled to Koh Tao, which she describes as a “party island for scuba.” They did their open-water certifications there, but after going back to Australia she realized there was an itch yet unscratched. She moved back to Koh Tao in 2012 to work toward becoming a divemaster and then bounced around the Asia Pacific as an itinerant divemaster.

Nurse sharks — Three tawny nurse sharks dance together on a night dive at Ari Atoll, Maldives.

Whale shark — The ocean’s largest shark species, the whale shark, swims below the surface at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia.

By 2017 she had landed a regular job on Nusa Lembongan island, just southeast of Bali, where her nascent fascination for underwater photography first flourished. The dive center where she worked had several Olympus Tough TG-5 cameras, which she borrowed to begin building her portfolio. The TG-5 has great native macro capability, and Pyke quickly discovered an affinity for nudibranchs.

A mother pale octopus cares for her eggs at Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia. She will forgo eating during this time, an ultimate self-sacrifice that will eventually kill her. She has laid her eggs inside a pipe that is part of an artificial reef structure.

Marine iguana feeds on algae — A freediving marine iguana feeds on algae growing over the shallow rocks in the Galápagos Islands.

She added a Canon Powershot G12 compact camera, a housing, and some video lights, and while the tools were modest, the photo opportunities were diverse and abundant. Oddly, for a photographer now best known for her work with megafauna, reef minutiae were her first obsession. She has unsurprisingly outgrown these relatively simple tools and now works with a Canon EOS R5 Mark II mirrorless camera, Nauticam housing, and Retra strobes.

Sun set over Ningaloo Reef — The sun sets over Ningaloo Reef after a hot summer’s day.

A male leafy seadragon carries a tail laden with oﬀspring nearly ready to hatch in the blue water of Esperance, Western Australia.

Pyke worked as a dive instructor and guide in Bali for three years and eventually started teaching photo specialty classes. She realized that underwater photography was all-consuming and wondered where she could do it full time.

Mangrove trees above a shallow reef — Lush mangrove trees thrive above a shallow reef at Gam Island, Raja Ampat, Indonesia.

Mobula rays — A fever of mobula rays migrates along the shores of Baja, Mexico, toward the Sea of Cortez.

The Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia percolated to the top as a possibility because all the tourist boats have an underwater photographer as part of the crew to document the day’s adventures. This opportunity meant freediving to photograph the whale sharks, manta rays, humpback whales, and various shark species so commonly seen there.

Exmouth is a small city with a population less than 3,000, but it is home to 12 boats operating daily snorkel tours and two specializing in scuba diving. Spotter planes communicate with the boats, so finding whale sharks is usually an everyday occurrence during the season.

Doing the photographer’s job well requires some athleticism, and training as a freediver helps, which Pyke got while in Indonesia. Working every day on the local boats and doing multiple drops on a wide range of creatures honed her skills to the point where she more often freedives now, at least while in Ningaloo.

The optimal Ningaloo dive season for whale sharks and other large animals is from March to September, with the possibility of cyclones ending the tourist season for the rest of the year. Pyke takes to the road during the quieter times, leading photo tours and teaching photography and marine conservation.

Ocean sunfish, also known as a Mola mola — The elusive ocean sunfish, also known as a Mola mola, shines brightly in the dark water at Baja, Mexico.

She works with the team at Airguides.com, a boutique travel coordinator that uses visual communicators and storytellers as their hosts. This collaboration recently took her to Raja Ampat, Indonesia, and in 2025 she’ll host tours to Ningaloo Reef and to Tonga to swim with humpbacks before returning to Raja Ampat.

A recent Instagram post she made in recognition of World Wildlife Day offers a telling insight into her life’s overarching passion:

“Each month, day, or year I look back on how I spent my time and judge the success of my life based not on money but on the wildlife I have been so fortunate to encounter — on the memories that will outlast everything. These moments and the time we spend in wild places have infinite value. Seeing wild animals thriving in their natural environment is something we should never take for granted. These are things that future generations may never get to encounter, as grim as that is.

A zebra shark cruises through dazzling sunbeams over a shallow reef at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia.

“The life we have experienced and the world we grew up in is changing. The people who come after us will never get to experience what we have. They may never see an orangutan roaming free in the jungle, may never see a marlin hunting a baitball, may never listen to the crackle of a healthy reef. This is what we stand to lose; this is what we must protect.”

See more of Pyke’s work at brookepykephotography.com.