Kraken, sea serpents, leviathans, the hydra, the sirens. We have been dreaming up fantastical sea creatures for as long as we have been telling stories. In the 4th-century poem, Ora Maritima, Avienus writes of an ancient explorer’s account of the sea, where “monsters of the deep, and beasts swim amid the slow and sluggishly crawling ships."

The ocean covers 71 percent of the planet's surface, yet more than 80 percent of this watery realm still remains unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. The Voyager 1 spacecraft sends us information from nearly 14 billion miles away, yet most of our home planet remains unknown. All of that mystery beckons the imagination to fill in the details. Is it any wonder that we have populated the vast inky depths with all manner of mythical sea-dwelling terrors?

Anuar Patjane plumbs these depths, camera in hand, to capture some of its mystery. “Oceans historically have been interpreted as dangerous and aggressive spaces, all the old myths and legends and tales of the sea speak of monsters, shipwrecks and terrible storms,” says the Mexico-based photographer.

Over the past few centuries, scientists and explorers have slowly gained more knowledge of the ocean’s marvels. In the 1870s, the HMS Challenger sounded the abyss of the Mariana Trench, discovering the deepest part of the ocean—a depression which extends a dizzying 36,200 feet beneath the waves. The ship’s crew also collected thousands of newly discovered marine species, pulling back the curtain, if ever so slightly, on some of the goings-on in the deep.

Add modern technology to the mix and we now have the NOAA ship, Okeanos Explorer, surveying uncharted areas of the world’s oceans the life they are finding is dazzling beyond imagination.

But as we are increasingly exploring the ocean, we are also increasingly exploiting it. Once a place of mystery and monsters, it has become a place to pollute and plunder. We are filling it with plastic detritus and depleting it of sea life at unsustainable rates. We look back in horror at our history of whaling, yet today commercial fishing has pushed one-third of the world's fisheries beyond their biological limits. Meanwhile, some 650,000 marine mammals are killed or seriously injured each year after being hooked, entangled, or trapped in fishing gear.

Part of humankind’s disregard for the ocean may be that it is just so “other,” but as Patjane sees it, “our perception has been biased by media, history and economic interests involving fishing rights.” He believes that there is an urgent need to change that perception—and his remarkable photographic series, Underwater Realm, is a great place to start.

In Patjane’s aquatic world, humans are but tiny parts in a fantastical seascape where scale is turned on its head. Divers are mere specks floating around enormous cetaceans; giant rays and magnificent schools of fish fill frames in which humans are barely noticeable.

His foray into the water came about serendipitously. While studying anthropology in college, Patjane signed on for an expedition to the Galapagos Islands, only to later realize that it would be an underwater expedition. He brushed up on his diving skills, got a housing for his camera, and dove in, so to speak. “I didn't really know what I was getting into,” he says, “but I did not want to waste the opportunity to get some good photographs underwater.”

Patjane has since photographed in waters around the world, including the Arctic and Antarctic. Many of the photos in this series come from the Mexican Pacific coast and the Sea of Cortez, which are closer to home. Despite their disparate locales, all share the same otherworldly tableau. Choosing to work in black-and-white, the lack of typical marine hues makes the images all the more dramatic. Light streams in with unreasonable beauty, and swaths of bubbles punctuate the water.

And the animals. They are always graceful, as if they have been choreographed by George Balanchine himself. They float and soar; they school to form fluid shapes, like starlings in murmuration. There is a benevolence to them, even the “scary” predators.

What is it like to be in the water surrounded by such majestic creatures? “In a word, awe,” says Patjane. “When a mother whale approaches and accepts you into her territory, or a group of dolphins decide to go after you so you can play with them, or those moments that all sea predators in the area decide to hunt sardines in coordinated attacks; the sea never ceases to impress me, there is always a surprise when you go into the underwater realm with an open mind and with patience.” 

It is a world that most of us will never experience firsthand. Thankfully, humans have figured out how to explore these watery kingdoms—and to do so with cameras, affording those of us on terra firma glimpses of the beauty that lies below.

If we all became a bit more aware of these underwater realms, even as armchair explorers looking at photos such as these, might we connect with the ocean more? And in turn, treat it with a bit more care?

It is easy to be dismissive of that which we are unfamiliar, and as far as the ocean goes, Patjane’s images allow us to enter this obscure world and get to know it a little better. He hopes that in sharing his work, viewers of his photos may see the ocean differently.

“I hope that people see the photos and feel the poetry and beauty that exists underwater,” he says. “Maybe a little of that awe that I feel can be transmitted through photography, and maybe that helps in perceiving the ocean as an environment that we can relate with, and not a faraway space.”

It is clearly an environment filled with grace and majesty, not monsters.

This article first appeared in Issue 14, The Explorers Issue.