Talk to an Expedition Specialist

Adam Maire

Divemaster
Naturalist, underwater videographer, captain, and historian, Adam Maire is dedicated to exploring around the globe with a goal of researching, documenting, and teaching others about the beauty, the power and the importance of the earth’s wild places. With degrees in animal science, history and a Scuba Diving Instructor certification, he is passionate about finding extraordinary ways to help others understand the links between the worlds that exist both above and below the surface of the ocean. As a temperate and cold-water diver, he is able to capture video and images of rarely seen marine life to create real connections with the underwater world.

Carol Kidu DBE Dr (Hons)

Global Perspectives Guest Speaker
Dame Carol Kidu has lived in Papua New Guinea for over 40 years with her extended family of Pari Village of the Motu tribe.  Her deep knowledge of a culture different from her birth culture gives her a unique understanding of the uncomfortable interface between tradition and modernity.   Dame Carol was widowed in 1994 – her late husband was the first indigenous Chief Justice of Papua New Guinea.

Christine West

Divemaster
Christine was fortunate to grow up in the Pacific Northwest on the shores of the Puget Sound. After graduating from the University of Washington, she decided to pursue her love of the ocean and exploration. Her passion for marine biology has inspired her through over 4,000 scuba dives around the globe in temperate and cold-water conditions, as well as snorkeling and freediving in extraordinary habitats such as in river beds with spawning salmon, in recently de-glaciated bays and lagoons filled with ice and glacial silt and in deep blue water with large marine animals including humpback whales, hammerhead sharks and pilot whales.

David Doubilet

National Geographic Photographer
For more than half his life David Doubilet has spent his days underwater. Doubilet took his first underwater photograph off the Jersey Shore when he was 12 years old, using a Brownie Hawkeye camera sealed in a rubber bag. Searching for brighter colors and more varied marine life than the continental U.S. could offer, Doubilet set his sights on the third largest barrier reef in the world, set off the coast of Andros Island in the Bahamas. There he spent his summers leading dives and photographing marine life. Doubilet shot his first story for National Geographic as a junior at Boston University in 1969.

Jen Hayes

National Geographic Photographer
Underwater photographers David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes are married partners who work together as a team to produce National Geographic stories from equatorial coral reefs to beneath the polar ice. David estimates he has spent nearly half his life in the sea since taking his first underwater photograph at the age of 12 with a Brownie Hawkeye camera sealed in a bag. Between them, Jennifer and David have photographed and explored the ocean depths in such places as New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Tasmania, Scotland, and Antarctica. David has photographed stingrays, sponges, and sleeping sharks in the Caribbean, as well as shipwrecks in the South Pacific, the Atlantic, and at Pearl Harbor. He has produced more than 70 stories for National Geographic magazine and several books, and has received the Explorers Club’s prestigious Lowell Thomas Award and the Lennart Nilsson Award in Photography.
 

Lawrence Blair

Global Perspectives Guest Speaker

Dr. Lawrence Blair is an expert on the culture, geography and zoology of Indonesia, with many years experience as a media communicator.  He has spent much of the past three decades exploring and making films in Indonesia.  In 2006 he wrote and presented, for Sky TV UK, the five-part series Myths, Magic and Monsters, which explores the stranger sides of both nature and the human mind.  He is also the writer, presenter and co-producer (with his late brother, Lorne) of the internationally acclaimed series Ring of Fire, (PBS in the States, and BBC in the UK) which won two Emmy awards in 1988.

Leah Eaton

Assistant Expedition Leader
Leah grew up in a small coastal town in the Pacific Northwest with Olympic National Park in her backyard, and it was here where her love of all things wild began. Ever since she ran around shipyards at an early age and watched her dad work in the marine trade, she has loved being near water.

Tom Ritchie

Naturalist
Tom is a professional naturalist and expedition leader who has worked in the field of expedition cruising almost since its inception by Lars Lindblad. Growing up near the Everglades allowed him to spend his youth exploring the swamps, marshes, forests, and reef systems of South Florida, a perfect training ground for his life with Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic.