SUBMARINE SHOOTER; PHOTOGRAPHER SUBMERGED IN HIS ART.

Byline: BRETT PAULY Outdoors

Lost.

It's exactly where underwater photographer William Boyce hopes viewers will be when they behold his work.

``I don't want people to look at the photos, I want them to get lost in the photos,'' said the 41-year-old Saugus artist. ``It's mind-boggling because it's an environment that very few people get a chance to experience.''

The image might be a close-up of schooling yellowfin tuna, dramatic enough in and of itself. But if Boyce has succeeded in using light and composition, onlookers might soon find themselves gazing through a viewfinder at a feeding pack of 200-pound denizens blowing past them at 30 mph and in such a frenzied commotion they feel compelled to shield themselves with the camera, just as the shutterbug did when he snapped the shot in the first place.

Maybe it's a stretch, but you get the picture. If you don't, relax and try looking again.

Take that sailfish finning through azure infinity. Can't you envision its protruded mane flaring up like a limber curtain to contain the ball of baitfish it intends to dine on? But don't ponder too long or you'll have to go home and rinse that saltwater out of your own mane.

The Granada Hills native travels the globe to have his images tell a convincing story. He has snapped rainbow trout in the Colorado River, dorado in Baja California, Galapagos sharks at Midway Island and billfish in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Guatemala, often as a fringe benefit of his work photographing fishing tournaments. He's planning trips to Panama, the Azores of the North Atlantic and Africa's Cape Verde islands. Closer to home, he shoots calico bass around the Channel Islands and yellowtail and sunfish in the shadows of kelp paddies off San Diego.

As diverse as the locales are, their inhabitants share an apprehension: bubbles. Indeed, the discharge from air tanks - and the racket from an accompanying regulator - tends to scare off wary sea creatures. So Boyce enters their world without the convenience of having oxygen strapped to his back (read: holding his breath), a maneuver that helps him take better photos and that has won him admirers.

``His ability to free dive creates a bubbleless environment to better blend in with the fish,'' said Michael Fowlkes of Laguna Beach, executive producer of Inside Sportfishing, a television show that prominently features submerged footage. ``He has actually captured dolphins mating. I think he's the only one to do that in the wild.''

Fowlkes, who recognized Boyce's talents and hired him in January to attempt videotaping in the brine for the first time, credits his artistic mastery to a couple of other attributes: ``His complete lack of fear when he is in the water and feeling a kindred spirit with the animals. It allows for a certain intimacy. He can get closer . . . and photograph them in a noninvasive way.''

Nearness to the subject in a darkly lit arena is imperative, since a flash is only effective at distances of less than about 10 feet. Trying that with a pelagic, or open-ocean fish like a tuna is exceedingly difficult. Shooting a hooked fish or a rockbound invertebrate is a more forgiving assignment, allowing the use of clattering scuba gear. ``A sea anemone isn't going to run away from you,'' Boyce said.

Either way, Boyce gets the shot, Fowlkes said. ``His images reflect his passion and love for the sea.''

It's a fire that was stoked long ago in Boyce. ``All my life I've loved fish. We were a big water-ski family. We'd get together on every little holiday and weekend off, and I always fish.''

In eighth grade, he saved $80 from mowing lawns to buy his first boat - an 8-footer with a catamaran hull that was always toted along on vacations - and quell his desire to fish for bass. He wrote a career-day paper on marine biology the same year. He parlayed his aquatic interest into a scuba-diving certificate in 1974, the year he graduated from Granada Hills High School, and went on to earn a degree in fisheries biology from Humboldt State University.

The U.S. Forest Service soon beckoned and Boyce worked four years in Tahoe National Forest, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon studying fish and their habitats, while backpacking into remote regions and learning how to handle a camera and tripod.

Then it was off on a 12-year tour for the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, under the umbrella of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For 60 to 70 days at a time, he was a high-seas observer aboard commercial tuna boats, keeping detailed navigational and fishing data to determine catch-per-effort counts. He also observed the behavior of netted dolphins before their release, hence, the rare dolphin shots.

(Earlier this year, Boyce spoke before staffs of both houses of Congress that were researching a proposed international treaty between tuna-catching nations aimed at complying with rigid dolphin-mortality quotas and observer regulations. He concluded dolphins were relaxed in the nets, to the point they felt comfortable enough to mate.)

His career took an incidental but major turn after snapping photos in the tuna nets. ``I just did it to bring shots back for my friends to show them what a mind-blow it was out there,'' he explained. ``I started doing slide shows for yacht clubs and dive clubs and fishing clubs. Then people started coming up to me afterward wanting to buy the stuff.''

Surprised and thrilled that others could share in his passion, Boyce obliged the requests. By complementing photo sales (his underwater work represents just 20 percent; scenic and travel art make up the vast majority) with a custom fishing rod-making business and writing articles for angling magazines, he was able to resign from federal service in 1994 to a self-described Bohemian lifestyle. Home is now a rustic cabin along a trout stream in a Bouquet Canyon artist enclave and his work is found in art galleries, nautical stores, bait and tackle shops and a line of greeting cards.

``I never, ever thought I was doing it to create a potential economic endeavor,'' Boyce said of his picture-taking pastime aboard the tuna boats.

Goes to show that the fruits of the sea are boundless, when properly managed.

CAPTION(S):

8 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) ``His ability to free dive creates a bubbleless environment to better blend in with the fish. He has actually captured dolphins mating. I think he's the only one to do that in the wild.''

- Michael Fowlkes

TV producer, on photographer William Boyce (left)

(2--5--Color) Saugus photographer William Boyce's underwater images include (clockwise, from left) bigeye jacks at Baja California's Cabo Pulmo Reef, a bull dorado from Loreto, Mexico, a Santa Cruz Island calico bass and a sailfish from Baja's East Cape.

(6--7--Color) An ocean sunfish, top, takes shelter under a kelp paddy southwest of San Diego, while a Colorado River rainbow trout fights the line.

(8--Color) Schooling yellowfin tuna, pictured here some 600 miles west of Costa Rica, can present a challenge to photograph when they are finning at a 30-mph clip.

William Boyce / Special to the Daily News