Daniel Hentz

New portrait work with Peter de Menocal, president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Taken on assignment for Oceanus Magazine and .ocean (©️ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

One of my favorite photos from 2025. Even in harsh daylight, Half Dome didn’t disappoint. After only two days in Yosemite, I could understand why Ansel Adams spent so much time in the park.

I’m deeply grateful I got to visit this national treasure. This, to me, is what makes our country great. We are called to protect it.

If I told you how tiny these teeth are you may not believe me.

Elizabeth Sibert is in her lab studying fossilized fish teeth to glean important knowledge about how fishes reacted to past climate periods, and what we can expect as we humans raise the temperature of our planet today.

In her PALEO Fish lab .ocean, she sifts through cores of soil from the deep-sea. Filtering and filtering again, she pairs down her sample to fine, sand-like grains. Under the microscope, she takes a paint brush with a tip no thicker than a pinch of hair to parse out fossils from sediment.

Even in oceanography, the past is not quaint, but incredibly useful. From each layer of the core, some separated by millions of years of time, these microscopic teeth are evidence of major jumps in evolution, and life’s will to carry on.
(Shot for ©️ .ocean)