The exhibition “Sob Mares Frágeis” gathers 25 large-scale photographs captured in the submarine depths by Pedro Camanho, a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.
The images, which are on display at the Biodiversity Gallery – Science Centre of the Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Porto, from January 14 to March 29, take viewers to the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Indo-Pacific oceans, revealing treasures often invisible in the biodiversity that teems within marine realms.
Onésimo Teotónio Almeida, a writer, philosopher and university professor, describes Pedro Camanho as a “camera-in-hand” diver, driven by “an obsession in a head covered by a diving mask.”
In a text published on the University of Porto’s online page, the academic states that the focus of the photographic work is “the life beneath the surface of the sea, what it was and what it is doomed to be if we do not guard against it.”
Besides showing the beauty of the deep seas, which escapes the eyes of many, “Sob Mares Frágeis” also aims to alert to the degradation of the oceans and marine ecosystems, as well as to the risk of disappearance of the species that live in them if concrete and correct measures are not taken to protect these life forms that are out of sight and, for that reason, often far from the heart.
“We have no excuses left to remain insensitively passive. It is urgent to save the sea if we want to save the land,” emphasizes Onésimo Teotónio Almeida in the preface to the book, published in 2024, which summarizes this photographic adventure through the seas, and which bears the same title as the exhibition.
Pedro Camanho, the author of “Sob Mares Frágeis”, is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, an Integrated Researcher at the Associated Laboratory in Energy, Transport and Aerospace (LAETA) and also a Researcher at the Center for Biodiversity and Genetic Resources (CIBIO).
Holding a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College London, he has also been a Visiting Researcher at NASA – Langley Research Center and a Visiting Professor at Brown University, the University of Cambridge and ENS-Cachan.
