It is especially satisfying to turn a dream into a sustainable career. Sometimes the dream comes true later in life and is unrelated to the path that once seemed certain. That is what happened to Henley Spiers when he traded his boardroom suit and tie for a wetsuit and fins suitable for temperate and tropical oceans.
Spiers was born in London, the son of a French mother and British father. They moved to the countryside, and he did not grow up by the ocean or have any family in a marine-related field. His initiation to the underwater world came on a family holiday to the Caribbean, where he learned to snorkel at 4 years old. By age 12 he had gone on his first scuba dive and was certified soon after. Visits to the ocean, however, remained occasional.
At the end of a dive around Gato Island in the Philippines, I was drawn to this solitary longfin batfish and a school of sardines. They were seeking shelter in the shallows of a small cove, and the scene had my creative juices firing. Playing with the reflection of the sardines on the underside of the surface unlocked an abstract, mystical quality to this frame. Incorporating movement into still images has become a signature for my body of work.
(Shetland, Scotland)
The long wingspan and streamlined bodies of gannets make flying look effortless as they glide along with just an occasional pulse of their wings. When they spot fish, the birds fly into the wind and stretch out their wings, precisely adjusting their position relative to their quarry, and then they hit the frigid water faster than an Olympic diver. These incredible birds have evolved air sacs in their heads and chests to survive these repeated heavy impacts. The sound underwater was thunderous, as streamlined white torpedoes pierced the surface. Visiting Shetland and photographing the gannets was an important moment, with the resulting images propelling my career forward. I make a point to visit Shetland every year.
He still preferred snorkeling over scuba and basketball over either of them. He had no doubt that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a London businessman. He graduated from the University of Bristol with a degree in history and moved straight into a job as a marketing consultant in London.
Despite a thriving career, Spiers was anxious, stressed, and unfulfilled. Rare visits to the ocean solidified it as his source of solace. A new plan emerged: He wanted to ditch the city life and become a dive professional on a tropical island.
(Dorset, England)
The British summer is mating season for tompot blennies, and competition is fierce. I went diving in search of the tompots and encountered one with ornate blue facial markings designed to attract a partner. To my wonder, another male blenny soon joined, and they started tussling. At one point they remained still long enough for me to capture this image. It was one of my first dives in British waters, and this is perhaps the first truly successful single image I had taken at that time, winning multiple awards and being published in The Sunday Times.
(Espiritu Santo Island National Park, Baja California Sur, Mexico)
A guineafowl pufferfish adopts a defensive posture as sea lion pups use it as a toy for their entertainment. California sea lion pups are famously playful and prone to using rocks, sticks, feathers, and sea stars as props in their games. In this case they interact with the pufferfish by nudging it up and down the water column.
Upon his next promotion, he quit. His astonished manager offered him a one-year sabbatical to get the adventure out of his system so he could come back to work like a proper lad. Spiers was 24 years old and had a job in hand, so he searched for where in Southeast Asia he could become a divemaster — never mind that he hadn’t yet progressed beyond his first scuba certification.
Spiers found an opportunity in Malapascua, Philippines, and swiftly signed up for a divemaster trainee internship. He soon realized that he was far happier living in his simple island surroundings and diving all day than he had ever been in his London life.
A dynamic scene evolved as manta rays fed on plankton at sunset. After discovering these manta rays feeding on an unusual concentration of plankton, I spent four days revisiting them, freediving with them for hours, mesmerized by their feeding pattern. As I was the only person in the water, the rays were bold and curious, which gave me the opportunity to try for a dream shot: a split image of the rays below and the last moments of sunlight above.
I could try for the rest of my career and never repeat this moment. A mahi-mahi crashed beneath the water and used its speed, ferocity, and precision to capture the sardine in its mouth from the open-ocean baitball. I captured this hunting scene, which played out within inches of my dome, as a split-level image. It happened in a fraction of a second, and I shot instinctively, not knowing if I had captured the peak of the action. Thankfully, I managed to preserve the moment. This is the beauty of photography: one brief, wild moment immortalized in time.
When that year was up, he had to decide whether to return to the boardrooms or commit to a new career in diving. The uniquely creative and diverse portfolio of images on the following pages attests to the choice he made at that crucial juncture.
After earning his dive instructor certification, he became the internship manager at a PADI dive center in Bali, where he managed as many as 30 interns. It was a dream job. After a couple of years, he remained committed to working in the ocean but wished to broaden his horizons, so he moved back to Malapascua to become a technical dive instructor.
Young sea lions use play to learn the skills they will need as adults. This joyful education relies on manipulating and chasing various objects, and sea stars are a particular favorite. The young sea lions pick up a sea star from the seabed, swim to the surface, and then drop it before they give chase. I shot this picture of the underwater game of fetch just as the pup came back down to seize the falling sea star.
Born during the great mobula aggregations of spring, juvenile Munk’s devil rays remain in the Sea of Cortez long after their parents have left, using the shallow bays of Espiritu Santo Island as a nursery. By autumn the water is clear, which is a bonus for underwater photography, but it also signifies less food for the filter-feeding rays. Plankton gathered around the green light hanging from the back of our boat, and the rays gratefully swooped in for a microscopic buffet. Their grace entranced me as they flew through the water after their prey. I used a two-second exposure to capture the aquatic ballet.
Around this time he met a Frenchman named Hoksbergen on the dive boat who was there on a dive holiday with his daughter, Jade (see her Shooter profile in the Fourth Quarter 2025 issue of Alert Diver). They all became friends, but their relationship was not life-altering until they were later thrown together in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in 2013.
One of the strongest typhoons to strike land, Haiyan devastated Malapascua. Spiers and the Hoksbergens spent the aftermath doing philanthropic relief work for the island. Their time together during these efforts led to greater familiarity, appreciation, and eventually love — and later marriage — between Jade and Spiers.
Next, Spiers spent three months in the Caribbean gaining his Yachtmaster Offshorequalification.While in St. Lucia he encountered a former intern, who was opening a new dive center there. He asked Spiers to join him at Dive Saint Lucia. That seemed more fun than being a skipper, so Spiers jumped ship, bringing along his newly acquired Olympus E-M5 camera and housing.
The volcanic Caribbean island is where his lifelong passion for underwater photography took hold. Hoksbergen joined him in St. Lucia, and together they immersed themselves in imaging. Spiers is quick to point out that his story could not be told without hers. She sees every photo first, before they are submitted anywhere, and their vision is a collective whole.
Seawater and sunlight created a rainbow pattern on the skin of this day octopus in a brief but beautiful moment. I spent 20 hours in the company of this octopus, and she grew very comfortable in my presence. This rainbow effect lasted only for a moment as the sun started to dip below the horizon.
The drive to pursue underwater photography became overwhelming, and Spiers took another professional leap of faith, quitting the dive industry to become a freelance photographer. He carved out revenue streams in an underwater photo specialty that included leading photo tours and coaching. He and Hoksbergen wrote a dive guide to Cebu and were beginning to get noticed just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. They had to cancel trips and issue refund checks.
When travel restrictions started to ease, Spiers traveled to theShetland Islands, the northernmost archipelago of the United Kingdom. His dramatic images of gannets plunging into the water earned a litany of awards, including the grand prize in the 2022 Hamdan International Photography Awards (HIPA), the richest photo contest in the world.
Those photos changed everything and launched a hot streak that found him on assignment documenting the Nekton Maldives mission to explore the deep ocean, collaborating with Laurent Ballesta, and winning the grant to become the first Oceanographic magazine Storyteller in Residence.
Spiers finally had the opportunity to tell long-form stories as a photojournalist. He used the grant money to pursue richly varied features across the globe, from marine conservation in Scottish seas to the groundbreaking work of cetacean scientists in Mexico. His work as a fully unfettered creator of images that tell a story best defines him today.
He and Hoksbergen are finishing their first film together. They have also published two books: Black is the New Blue, Vol. II et du Guide to Cebu.
Spiers’ distinctive vision is reflected in numerous awards, including the Ocean Fine Art Photographer of the Year in 2024; the Ocean Geographic Society’s David Doubilet Portfolio Award; category wins in Underwater Photographer of the Year, Nature Photographer of the Year, and the British Wildlife Photography Awards; and many highly commended recognitions in prestigious awards dating back to 2017.
Spiers and Hoksbergen live with their two daughters in Devon, England. He continues to lead bespoke photo tours for small groups of highly motivated underwater photographers while refining a vision that combines an appreciation of natural history and a fine art aesthetic.
The Galápagos Islands are a meeting point for four ocean currents, including the powerful Humboldt Current, which transports cold water across the surface from the south. The Cromwell Current hits the western side of the archipelago, bringing cold water from the deep. This ocean circulation makes marine life so rich in the archipelago. The confluence of oceanic currents at times leads to turbid underwater visibility, but on this day the water was exceptionally clear as a green turtle swam beneath me.
En savoir plus
Learn more about Henley Spiers and his work in these videos and a bonus photo gallery. Read his Storyteller in Residence 2023 Dispatches at https://oceanographicmagazine.com/sir/henley-spiers.
© Alert Diver – Q1 2026