Boca photographer counsels St. Vincent kids to be caretakers
This sea turtle was saved from mistaking the plastic bag for an edible jellyfish when the photographer grabbed the bag. Photo provided by Ben Hicks
By Ron Hayes
When Denise O’Loughlin, the principal at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic School in Delray Beach, introduced that morning’s guest speaker, about 100 middle schoolers gathered in Kellaghan Hall welcomed him with polite applause.
When he had finished speaking 45 minutes later, the applause was loud and long, borne on a wave of enthusiasm mere etiquette cannot inspire.
In between, Ben Hicks had taken them underwater to visit sea turtles and jellyfish. He had shown them a Galapagos shark off the coast of Hawaii, a whale shark off Borneo, and a jaguar stalking turtles in Costa Rica.
He had shown them beautiful creatures in their natural habitat, shown them how human beings threaten those creatures, and then what human beings can do to save them.
Hicks, 45, is a nature photographer who travels the world from his home in Boca Raton, bringing back images that have been displayed in the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Manhattan skyscrapers and Central American hotels.
“I like to talk to young people,” he says. “I tell them my background, the stories behind the images, and how I use the images as a voice for environmental awareness.”
On that Wednesday morning in May, Hicks began with a very simple statement.
“I press the button for a living,” he said, and then he filled the big white screen at his back with some of the marvelous images that button-pressing had captured.
When he showed the students a hundred-foot wave curling before a fiery sunrise, they oohed.
And when he revealed that in fact that wave was really only two feet high, shot in only a few feet of water off Boca Raton’s Red Reef Park one morning, they gasped in amazement.
A gray triggerfish is not the cutest of creatures, and to see one close up, swimming straight for Hicks’ camera by the Boca Inlet, brought startled “oohs.”
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“A lot of times I’ve spent 21/2 hours to get close,” he explained. “I’m in their habitat, so I let them have their space. I spent three days in North Florida waiting for manatees.”
He showed them the manatees those three days had earned him.
“I also use drones,” he said, and took the students high above the curving coastline of Costa Rica, and then had them look down on tiny sea turtles swimming far below in clear Indonesian waters.
The students learned that the beak of a macaw, photographed only a few feet away, can be a beautifully unnerving thing. And they oohed.
And then the screen was filled with an anonymous couple seated at a rustic table, with one of Hicks’ most popular prints, a baby loggerhead sea turtle, hanging on the wall above.
He’d happened on it in a hotel during a trip to Costa Rica last October. The hotel’s owner had found it online and enlarged it.
“He was a little embarrassed when I told him I’d taken the picture,” Hicks said, “but I told him it was all right, and then I signed the photo.”
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Raised in Venice, Ben Hicks arrived at Florida Atlantic University in 1998 to pursue a degree in audiology. He’d had ear surgery as a child, so that seemed a sensible career.
Six months later, he switched to graphic design. And then he found photography.
“I borrowed my sister’s camera to shoot my surfer friends,” he recalled. “This was freshman year, she was still in high school, and that Christmas I asked for a camera and got a Canon EOS Rebel.”
In college he had a design internship at a local advertising agency and was offered a full-time job when he graduated in 2003. “But I quickly found out the cubicle life was not for me.”
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The majority of Ben Hicks’ portfolio deals with sea turtles, with many of the photos from near his home, including this loggerhead hatchling shot in Boca Raton. Photo provided by Ben Hicks
Hicks stayed at the agency a year to learn the business, and then he hit the road.
“I packed my truck and drove around the country for three months first, exploring where I wanted to go.”
He surfed the Pacific coast, did freelance work with a Canon 10D, his first digital camera, and found work as a mechanic in a San Diego bike shop.
Back in Boca Raton by 2005, he bought a casing to keep his camera dry underwater, and when a friend invited him to shoot sea turtles, he found his calling.
In 2008, the Friends of Gumbo Limbo, now called the Coastal Stewards, invited Hicks to display his work at their Sea Turtle Day, and he began selling his photos in their gift shop.
Today he has 43 retailers throughout the Southeast.
His work has appeared in both National Geographic magazine and on the Disney Channel.
His cinematography for the PBS documentary Troubled Waters: A Turtle’s Tale won an Emmy, and he was part of the team that created We’re All Plastic People Now, also for PBS, which won another.
Come July he’ll be in Mexico, to surf and photograph more turtles.
And he does all this without scuba diving.
“I had scar tissue from the ear operations, so growing up they said I shouldn’t scuba dive because it would create pressure in my ears,” he said. “I’m pretty much deaf in my right ear, so I only use a mask, snorkel and fins. That keeps it simple. I can walk the beach with my gear.”
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“Who knows what jellyfish look like in the water?”
“Translucent,” one student called out.
“Plastic bags,” another said.
“That’s right,” Hicks told them, and now he’d arrived at the real reason he was there that morning.
“Sea turtles eat jellyfish,” he said, “and they can mistake plastic bags for jellyfish.”
On the right side of the screen, a green sea turtle approached a plastic bag on the left.
“Six years ago, it finally happened,” Hicks said. “I’ve been shooting since 2006, and in 2019 I was shooting this turtle and a plastic bag floats in.”
He pressed the button, then grabbed the bag before the turtle could eat it.
“PLASTIC KILLS,” the screen told the students.
“How long does plastic last in the ocean?” he asked. “Anybody know? A minimum of 1,000 years.”
He showed them a photo of a dead 4-inch baby turtle next to hundreds of plastic pieces found inside it.
“Thousands of baby turtles leave our coast every morning in [nesting] season,” he explained, “and plastic is found in their stomach. Most of the time, the plastic breaks down into small pieces that are easier for turtles to eat, unfortunately.”
Ask Hicks for the one shot he longs to get, that single photo that eludes him, and he says it’s not about the shot. It’s about the viewers’ reaction.
“For me, that one shot is the one that will impact the most to bring environmental awareness,” he said. “You don’t know the shot that will really impact people on how they care about the environment, but a lot of people tell me, ‘I’ve never been in the ocean before.’ And then they see a baby turtle.”
“Pick up trash on the beach,” he encouraged the students. “Carry your water in a reusable bottle. Bring your own straw.
“You guys are the next generation,” he said. “It’s important that you guys know our planet needs your help at all times.”
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When the long, loud, enthusiastic applause had died down for the man who’s pretty much deaf in his right ear, the students said they had heard him perfectly.
“I heard a lot about how we can take care of the ocean,” said Alora Kuzzy, 12, a seventh-grader from Greenacres. “There are things we can change by what we buy and reusable items and cleaning the beach.”
Dylan Urrutia, 13, a seventh-grader from Delray Beach, said, “He showed me how even a little plastic can hurt a turtle. And how much plastic is in them.
“The photos were really impressive and hard to take, but they told a great story.”
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Hicks ended his session at St. Vincent Ferrer by taking a selfie with students and staff. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Last October, Hicks traveled to Tortuguero, Costa Rica, hoping to photograph a jaguar preying on a sea turtle.
“They’re not a threat to humans,” he told the students, “but jaguars roam the beach along the rainforest, where the mother turtles return to lay their eggs on the same beach where they were born.”
One night, Hicks got unlucky. The jaguar appeared, coming toward him out of the jungle, but he couldn’t get a camera out of his backpack fast enough, and went home with only an unfocused, badly lit shot with his iPhone.
“I’ll be back this year,” he promised.
To see more examples of Ben Hicks’ nature photography, visit benjhicks.com.
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