Roberto Rinaldi, 20 years under the seas

Roberto Rinaldi, world famous underwater photographer and filmaker, has just reached 20 years of career. 20 years passed sharing his love for nature and passion for photography with the millions of people that has seen his amazing documentaries, filmed in his true house, the Mediterranean Sea, as well as in the furthest places on earth. A long underwater road that had led him to work as official photographer on Calypso, the boat of Jacques Costeau, realizing reportages that had been published also on National Geographic, the "bible" of nature photography. During the years he had explored the waters of the world without rest, diving even in a lake at 5000m of altitude in the mountains of Tibet or in the Baikal Lake during the Siberian winter at -50 degrees, or even in the flooded holes that dips down inside the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia, exploring them for the first time in history. But Roberto is not tired yet, and keep on shooting, making documentaries, tv series, advertising, publishing book and reportages, always ready to dress his wetsuit and dive to the deep. Roberto Rinaldi is a SEAWAYphotographer and cameraman. Here we have a very short selection of some of his amzing shots that Roberto has kindly described with his own words just for us allowing to almost feel the sensation of diving right beside of him....

©Roberto Rinaldi "It was just an idea, a theory, but some Italian speleologists thought that the streams which run thtrough the glaciers surface and then disappear inside deep potholes, could act like the waters in the Karst systems. And so we found ourselves exploring, for the first time in history, the ice caves opened inside Perito Moreno glaciers in Argentina."

©Roberto Rinaldi "Just arrived next to the shores of Antartic Peninsula, a big whale comes to observe us. It passes close to the boat and dives passing below of us."

©Roberto Rinaldi "In Indonesia we have discovered some gorgonians upon which live the world smallest Sea Horses. They are known as Pigmy Sea Horses and their overall length don't reach one centimeter.. The structure of their epidermis is shaped in a way that allow them to camouflage perfectly with gorgonias. Just a powerful flash shot allow us to completely reveal this curious little fish."

©Roberto Rinaldi "We were dipping over a reef off Sidney, in Australia. Very high waves, a violent current. Suddenly the shoal of King Fishes crowd together. We realize in a brief time that it's all about a shoal of sharks that are behaving like they would be a pack of wolves: all together they are encircling the fishes. The latters, press against themselves in the attempt to find protection, forming a shape similar to a sphere. Nevertheless the aggressors insist, and push the sphere to the range of a shark laying in ambush, which is going to launch his attack."

©Cousteau society/Roberto Rinaldi "It was the first day of April of many years ago. Captain Costeau came to wake me up in my cabin and told me: “Wake! Hurry up! Let's go to film the elephants swimming”. “And why not the flyin' donkeys? Good April fool trick, Captain”, the answer was obvious. Instead the swimming Elephants were really there. We were in the Andaman islands, local people don't owe boats so big to transport the elephants, used for the hard jobs in the islands. So they make them swim. The show was not up to much, just an indian crouched on the head of the the plunged animal and the top of the trunk emerging like a snorkel. So, why don't dive and shoot the scene from the bottom?" This selection is just a brief appetizer. We advise you all to explore the larger and amazing SEAWAY Galleries. It will be certainly an immersion you will not regret.