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Peter Hall is a successful full-time wilderness artist, who established his reputation painting uniquely impressionist African landscapes. He has now expanded his artistic repertoire to include major wilderness areas through out the world. He travels regularly with Australian Adventure Company, Aurora Expeditions, as a Photographic Guide. These trips have taken him to the Falklands and South Georgia, Antarctica, the Arctic and the Amazon.
Although painting remains Peter's main focus, his photographic work has become increasingly important. He has received awards for his photography in South Africa's Agfa Wildlife Competition, Germany's Glanzlichter Photographic Competition and in the prestigious BBC International Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Through his art and photography, Peter hopes to promote a greater appreciation of the beauty inherent in our unspoiled natural areas, as it is only by loving and appreciating nature that humanity will learn to value and conserve it. As a dedicated bird-watcher, Peter is particularly passionate about the plight of the albatrosses.
"The albatross is one of the most beautiful of all living birds with its awesome wingspan and graceful swooping flight. Most amazing too, is its story – an over forty year life span spent circumnavigating the globe, covering huge distances over the open seas on long solo journeys, eventually returning to their partner-for-life to breed possibly once every two years.
Albatrosses are seen flying all over the oceans of our planet, so they seem plentiful, but in reality, there is only a small global population – and it is decreasing at an alarming rate. In a tragic irony, the existence of the bird known as the fisherman's friend is being threatened by that very industry. Seabirds have learned to scavenge food from ships over many generations. When baited hooks are deployed from the stern of long-line fishing vessels, they attempt to snatch the baits, are hooked and drowned.
To a fisherman catching tons of fish each trip, killing one or two birds every other day may seem harmless. However, albatross populations are generally small and reproduce very slowly. Some albatrosses only start breeding at the age of ten years and then only lay one egg every second year. In a life span stretching more than 40 years, an albatross pair will only produce a handful of chicks. Albatross populations are thus finely balanced, and very sensitive to even low levels of increased mortality caused by humans
The global scale of the long-lining problem is not fully understood. Their effortless gliding flight enables albatrosses to cover over a thousand kilometres in a single day, giving them potential contact with thousands of long-line fishing vessels operating in the Southern Ocean, as well as off the coasts of South Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand. Some boats set lines of over a hundred kilometres, with more than twenty thousand hooks attached. Each hook carries the threat of albatross extinction.
Although permit conditions require that long-line vessels employ measures to minimise the by-catch of seabirds, the effective use of these measures is largely dependent on the motivation of the fishermen themselves, and this is where the work of BirdLife's "Save The Albatross" comes in. By educating the fishing companies and lobbying for public support on this issue, we hope to turn the tide of albatross mortality and ensure that these incredible flight-masters continue to grace our ocean's waves."
Determined to play whatever part he could in the conservation of the albatross, Peter created "The Wanderer" for BirdLife International to produce as a fine art print. All proceeds from the sale of this print go to "Save the Albatross".
By purchasing one of these prints for just $30, you can help to celebrate the life of the albatross whilst playing a vital role in helping to conserve it.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looksHad I from old and young!Instead of the cross, the AlbatrossAbout my neck was hung.
-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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