their caliber, but I had useful skills such as photography
and writing, so they allowed me to tag along for years,
documenting their feats for magazines.
SF
//
It seems odd to me that a guy who is
best known for marine-life interactions, fish
photography and critter ID got started diving in
caves— an environment so devoid of life.
ND
//
Well, it wasn’t just the caves and springs I was
exploring back then. I wanted to experience it all.
Right out of college three of my swim-team mates and
I bummed our way south from Isla Mujeres in the
Yucatan through Central America toting spearguns
and cameras until we ran out of money. I also took
road trips to the Keys, Miami, West Palm Beach and
the Gulf Coast to dive. I quickly found that there
wasn’t much information about where to dive in
Florida, so I wrote my first book, Diving Guide to
Florida Springs, in 1971, which I followed with Diving
Guide to the Florida Keys. I combined the two titles
into Diving Guide to Underwater Florida a few years
later when I began adding other areas of the state. The
book is still around, currently in its 11
th
edition.
SF
//
Your collaborations with Paul Humann, an
extraordinarily gifted underwater photographer in
his own right, have to a great extent defined this later
portion of your career. How did that come about?
ND
//
Paul is a consummate pioneer, having left behind
a law practice in Wichita, Kansas, to own and operate
the Caribbean’s first successful liveaboard, the Cayman
Diver. Throughout the 1970s, while diving with guests,
Paul took photos of marine life virtually every day for a
decade. After his Cayman Diver days, a mutual friend
introduced us, and we hit it off right away.
Shortly after our meeting I was asked to edit Ocean
Realm magazine. It was a beautifully printed quarterly
journal of the sea, much like the new Alert Diver, with
top-flight writing and photography. But, as you know,
a magazine is a lot of work, and so I asked Paul to be
co-editor. This was back in 1987. I was responsible
for the words, and Paul dealt with the photography.
The magazine was a hit, breaking even by just the
second issue. We were on a roll for the next year
and a half until the magazine was sold unexpectedly
to a publisher in Texas. But as things turned out,
the setback was temporary. I continued writing the
magazine’s Underwater Naturalist column for years.
More important, Paul and I realized we enjoyed working
together, so we decided to publish a series of marine-
life guides for divers built around his collection of
images. Out of necessity we did everything ourselves —
researching, writing, photographing, financing, designing,
publishing and ultimately distributing our own products.
Our first title, Reef Fish Identification: Florida,
Caribbean, Bahamas, rolled off the press in 1989 and sold
out within a year. Over the next two years we followed
with a Caribbean creature and then a coral book, which
along with the fish made up the three-volume Reef Set.
Paul stopped living off his credit cards, and I retired from
teaching. Now, nearly 25 years later, we have produced
nine guides sold around the world. It hasn’t made us rich,
but it sure has made for a nice lifestyle.
SF
//
I remember those early books as being comb-
bound, but I just bought my copy of your latest, the
new edition of Reef Creature Identification: Florida,
Caribbean, Bahamas, and I see it is more elegantly
produced and includes many more animals than
those early references I still have in my library.
ND
//
Before our guides hit the market, marine-life
books were primarily written by scientists for scientists,
with descriptions based on obscure anatomical features
such as fin counts and the number of scale rows. In the
Caribbean there are between 400 and 500 fish species
that you might bump into on a dive. Scientific texts
traditionally entered all the species in their supposed
evolutionary order with cartilaginous fish, sharks
and rays appearing first and cowfishes and filefishes
appearing near the end, a system that makes little
sense to anyone but ichthyologists. So we simplified
the information. We began by organizing the fishes
into broad visual categories, keeping lookalike species
together whenever possible. We also added information
pertinent to divers, including fishes’ typical reaction to
divers, their habits and how common or rare they are.
What has significantly changed over the years is the
number of species included in our books. Take for
example our new third edition of the creature book you
mentioned. With the help of numerous photographers and
the addition of Les Wilk (of ReefNet fame) as an author,
we increased the species count from 500 to nearly 900.
Even with these increases, we feel we’ve only scratched the
surface of what is still out there to find and photograph.
SF
//
Your wife, Anna, plays a significant role in
your projects; describe how you work together.
IMAGING
//
S H O O T E R
94
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WINTER 2014
