Brian Skerry grew up wondering about life beneath the waves off the shore of his native Bay State. “I always wanted to be an explorer. I thought I wanted to be an astronaut or exploring jungles, but there was definitely something about the ocean that really spoke to me,” says the National Geographic photographer and New England Aquarium explorer in residence. “It just seemed like a place that was ripe for discovery that really spoke to my soul.” His latest journey, chronicled in the magazine’s May issue, spanned two years and nine locations, including Honduras, Argentina and the Bahamas, where he shot never-before-photographed foraging and recreation activities of dolphins. “It’s been described as a sort of alien intelligence here on Earth. We really don’t know how much they know. What are they doing with these giant brains?” Skerry says, recalling a game of “catch” he caught on film. “Although they’re mammals and air breathers and sort of related to us, they really are almost this parallel intelligence in the ocean that we’re only just beginning to understand.”

That quest for understanding takes Skerry, who has contributed to National Geographic for 17 years, on the road up to nine months a year. While he counts Japan and the Azores among his favorite destinations, his most memorable trip was to New Zealand’s Auckland Islands. On assignment to compare southern right whales with their North Atlantic counterparts, he ended up in a dive suit at the bottom of the ocean taking photos while creatures “as big as a city bus” swam around him with a gentle curiosity. “I’ve sort of become addicted to extraordinary experiences…to having these magical encounters,” he says. “It is that sort of wanderlust, but it’s also knowing that the potential exists to see things that most people might never get to see, and to tell these stories.”

Tips from a Frequent Flyer

• Pay attention to layovers: “Even though I’m so pressed for time these days, I’ve learned to really start booking every single detail of my itinerary to make sure I’ve got time between connections.”

• Save ticket stubs: “I just had a huge trip in South Africa—it was like 12,000 miles that wasn’t credited to my account. And the only way I got those miles credited to my account was because I had saved my ticket stub, my boarding pass, and had the actual information that they were requesting, including the ticket number, which you can only find on that ticket.”

• Pack smart: “The truth of the matter is so many times my assignments have me out on boats at sea for weeks at a time or at a beach at the edge of the jungle in Indonesia for three weeks, and breakfast is a PowerBar and a malaria pill. I have to take a lot of stuff that I need. I took a little French press so that I can have a coffee, and I took a bunch of freeze-dried meals…just so I could have some of the civilized comforts of home.”