Welcoming National Geographic’s Paul Nicklen

Paul Nicklen has spent his life chasing narwhal, swimming with leopard seals, bonding with grizzly bears and playing under the Aurora Borealis.

In the final lecture of this year’s Lesley University Boston Speakers Series season, Nicklen brought his unique voice and set of experiences to the Boston Symphony Hall stage, where he regaled the audience on Wednesday night with tales and images from his wildlife adventures that ranged from humorous and endearing to perilous and tragic.

Nicklen, a National Geographic assignment photographer who has won more than 20 international awards, has spent his adult life documenting the Arctic and the Antarctic. He has become an outspoken conservationist, and while he delivered serious messages about climate change and the health of oceans, he established at the outset of his lecture that he was also there to show the audience a good time.

“This is a great opportunity to do an Instagram story of the audience,” Nicklen mused after he greeted the enthusiastic, sold out crowd. He proceeded to pull out his phone, commanded the house lights to raise and panned the cheering crowd to create a social media video that he posted instantaneously for his 4.2 million Instagram followers.

“Now if you’re not supposed to be here tonight, hide your face,” he quipped, “or even worse, if you’re here with the wrong person.”

A life on the ice

Nicklen is Canadian and, when he was 4, his family moved from Saskatchewan to Baffin Island, where he spent his childhood among the Inuit people. Their groceries were delivered once a year by boat (2,000 pounds of dry goods) and they endured temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees and storms with 100 mph winds.

“The Arctic treats everyone differently,” he recalled. “For me, right away, I knew I was home. It grabbed my heart.”

They had no television, telephone or radio.

“I was literally outside all the time,” he said.

Before he became a photojournalist, Nicklen started his career as a polar bear biologist, but he felt personally unsatisfied doing research that turned “the majesty of this animal into a data set.” He resolved to help the Arctic in another way and set out on his own to document the Barren Lands tundra for three months with 600 pounds of food and camera equipment.

“By 2½ months in, I’d actually literally gone crazy,” he recalled with a laugh. “I made up imaginary friends to help them cross the river. But it was so calming that, after three months, I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

“I wanted to get into National Geographic and take people to places they’re never going to see,” he added. “My job is to grab people by the heart.”

(View more photos from the evening.)

Up close and personal with rare wildlife

During his talk and accompanying photo and video slideshow, Nicklen showed an array of footage he has gathered from some of the earth’s most extreme and remote environments.

Photos of seal pups and bear cubs elicited “oohs and ahhs," and the audience laughed at images of animals at play, like the polar bear who balanced a snowball on his head and then fell asleep cuddling it.

“So, this is me in my office,” Nicklen quipped as he showed a photo of himself bobbing in slushy ocean water with a regulator in his mouth.

Nicklen dazzled the crowd with his pursuit of elusive creatures, like spirit bears, found only in the remote archipelago of British Columbia’s central coast. He swam with killer whales and with narwhals (the unicorns of the sea) and captured groundbreaking underwater footage of them. He showed a video of a giant bull walrus lunging and bucking at him while he was trying to photograph it.

“Who has been in the water with a breeding elephant seal?” Nicklen posed. “I got attacked instantly. It almost cost me my life.”

Nicklen spoke about the endurance and patience required for getting the best photos, which can take years and many thousands of shots. He described the stages and sensations of becoming hypothermic in 28-degree water and recalled unrelenting seasickness on the rough journey to Antarctica.

“I’m vomiting everywhere, for 48 hours straight. My diaphragm goes into spasms,” he recalled. He recounted his desperate pleading to a seasoned shipmate, who joked and said to him, “At first you pray to live, then you pray to die.”

Admiration evolves into activism

During the span of Nicklen’s lifetime, the Arctic sea ice has diminished dramatically. He showed the audience troubling images of starving and dead mammals, and places where the ice has receded or vanished entirely. Svalbard, Norway has warmed 15 degrees, he said.

“Without ice, the Arctic can’t survive,” said Nicklen, who, along with a group of nature photographers, co-founded SeaLegacy, an ocean conservation advocacy organization. “We need to make images that have purpose. We need to reach the world.”

Nicklen showed photos and video of unsustainable fisheries, including off-shore drift nets that catch 65 percent bycatch. He played his now-famous footage of a starving polar bear that he filmed for National Geographic, which went viral in December 2017.

“We are finding dead bears. We never used to,” said Nicklen, noting that scientists predict that the polar bear population will decline 30 percent by 2050. “The idea was to show what a starving bear looks like.”

Nicklen has used his photography and observations to advocate for fishery regulation and other wildlife protection, and he encouraged audience members to get involved in whatever way possible, starting at the local level and with personal decisions, whether it’s reducing the use of plastic in cafeterias or winnowing meat and fish from your diet.

“We have to factor (the environment) into every decision we make,” he said.

The 2018-19 season of the Lesley University Boston Speakers series begins Oct. 10 with former FBI Director James Comey.