Mike Bartick: Blackwater Beckons

The story will be about his dad, a Navy sailor in World War II who moved from Detroit, Michigan, to Westminster, California, to be closer to the ocean. Trips in the family car to Huntington Beach as a kid instilled in Mike a calling to the sea. These were different, perhaps less dangerous times, but when he was only 8 years old he’d hop on the bus to Huntington, where he would body surf and swim. As he got a little older, his bike was his passport to beach adventure, and he would snorkel around Laguna Beach and boogie board at the iconic surf break known as the Wedge.

He constantly searched the water for the coral reefs he saw in National Geographic, not knowing there was a difference between tropical and temperate habitats. When his family went to Hawai‘i for a summer vacation, he had his epiphany. Warm, clear waters were different — not necessarily better, as he loved his California backyard, but a world unlike what he knew. He tried to tell the tale with his Minolta Weathermatic 110 film camera to predictably miserable results.

Cousteau’s documentaries and Sea Hunt were before his time, but books and magazines depicting the underwater world captured his attention. For no apparent reason that his parents could ever deduce, he often walked around the house making the sound of exhaust bubbles. Mike contends that “whatever it is, it’s always been there.”

Whatever “it” was evolved slowly. For 20 years Mike had a career as a chef. It was so stressful that his friends told him he needed to do something to take the edge off, and one of their suggestions was to go to Catalina and try diving. Once underwater, an aura of peace enveloped him. He started going to Shaw’s Cove in Laguna Beach every day after work. When he found his first nudibranch, he thought he had discovered a new species. While that was not the case, he describes the experience as his “gateway drug.”

Seeking like-minded enthusiasts, he joined a dive club and wanted to share underwater photos. The $10,000 Nikon RS he coveted was beyond his grasp, but a 3-megapixel Sony digital was attainable, so he got his first digital camera. It didn’t have any strobes, but he didn’t know what they were for anyway. One of his early shots was of a bat ray swimming through the kelp. He showed it to his friends on the boat, one of whom passed it on to California Diving News. They ran it, so by 2004 he was a published underwater photographer.

In those early years, around 2005, Mike shot a lot of macro images. Captioning them meant improving his writing skills and researching more about his subjects. He started understanding that the best behavioral shots were from people who understood their subjects’ habits and habitats. To be a better photographer, he learned to be a better naturalist.

I know you primarily for your work from the Coral Triangle, particularly in the Philippines. How did your transition there from Southern California happen?

By 2006 I was already obsessed with photography, and I was making money as a chef, so I could afford to travel to new and exotic dive destinations to practice my craft. I went to Indonesia, and Lembeh was my first love. It was heaven for a critter enthusiast, and the thought consumed me that one day I could live somewhere like that and shoot every day.

Did you find a market for the photos you were shooting back then?

I had a good relationship with California Diving News, so I asked them if I could write a travel feature. Their editor told me, “We love your photography, but if you want to be a writer, you have to practice every day.” The writing was never as easy as photography, but I wrote every day and recognized that being able to package words and photos was important.

Living nine months of the year in Anilao, Philippines, and being a partner and operations supervisor at Crystal Blue Resort seems a long way from recreational diving in Lembeh.

I raved so much about how good Lembeh was that one of my friends told me to try Anilao for a change of pace. It was 2007, and there weren’t a lot of international divers going there yet, but it was remarkably accessible. The ease of travel was promising. Then I went diving and was blown away. The wide-angle and macro opportunities were off the charts!

My catering business in California was going well, but the more it grew, the more I was stressed and wanted to be underwater. Diving and photography were cathartic, and I kept coming back to Anilao in my mind. What if I could build a comfortable resort with a dedicated camera room, great food, and world-class guides, like the resorts I’d enjoyed in Lembeh? I wanted to create that kind of operation in the Philippines but needed the right ingredients to come together.

In 2010 it all fell into place. The Philippines Department of Tourism sent me on a junket to dive around the country, during which I met my girlfriend. The emotional and professional ties were growing, then I stumbled upon Crystal Blue, an already-charming leisure resort with a modest dive concession. Anilao was a diamond in the rough, but I saw the potential.

Anilao is now known as a world-class dive destination, but I don’t remember that vibe from 2011. Were you involved in promoting it?

Yes, but kind of accidentally. I contacted a respected travel agent  and told him what we were trying to do. He said Anilao was primarily known for “bad food, bad reefs, and bad air.” Clearly, we had some work to do if that was the perception. After we made some changes, our confidant sent a mystery shopper to the resort to evaluate our operation. The review was so glowing that we knew we were on the right track, and our business grew by word of mouth.

I’m guessing you aren’t still shooting that 3-megapixel Sony. What do you use these days?

I have the full-frame Nikon D850 and the cropped-sensor D500 and use whichever is best for the subject. I love shooting natural history, and I also began (as many of us do) with fish identification photos. But I wanted to go further toward an artistic execution, so I began to play with the lenses’ extremes and bokeh, variable shutter speeds, snoots, diopters, steel wool, and filtered lights. The underwater world of Anilao is an astonishing playground, and the diving was easy enough that I could experiment and improve.