About Us

 

This is a production from the hearts and souls of a passionate a team. We were blessed with the support of some of the most published authors and image makers of our natural world. OceanNEnvironment is privileged to introduce the editorial board of Ocean Geographic Society.

Board of Directors, OceanNEnvironment Australia

The Editorial Board

Michael AW – Director & Board Member

Michael’s saturated colour imageries have earn him more than 60 international awards; his work have been featured in BBC Wildlife, National Geographic, the Smithsonian, GEO, Ocean GEOGRAPHIC, Asian Geographic, Action Asia, Nature Focus to name but a few. In 2010, he was a recipient of the WYLAND ICON award for Conservation. His most glorious achievement is a Palme D’or for “Philippines- Heart of the Ocean”, won at the World Underwater Pictures Festival, France 2009. He is also a recipient of three awards from the Natural History Museum BBC Photographer of the Year Wildlife Competition in 2000, 2010 and in 2006 he won the Best Winner award in the underwater category. Michael AW is the founder of OceanNEnvironment’s a charity organization registered with Environment Australia. In 2008 Stan Waterman conferred Michael with the Peter Benchley Shark Conservation Award by Sharks Research Institute in recognition of his highly-effective and unrelenting campaign against shark fin soup consumption in the Asia Pacific region. Michael is also the founder of Asian Geographic.

Carden Wallace PhD – Honorary Editor & Board Member

Carden's research has focused on biogeography and biodiversity, particularly on corals and tropical biota. Her current interests are directed towards other tropical countries, especially Indonesia. She feels strongly that scientists should give back all they possibly can, in communicating and applying the results of their work. With her appointment in 1987 as Curator in Charge, Carden Wallace became the first woman to head the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville. Among the high points in her career was the POL Prize for Environmental Research, awarded in 1992 to Carden along with four other scientists from James Cook University for their exciting discovery of mass annual spawning on the Great Barrier Reef by over a hundred species of coral. This dramatic example of sexual synchronization is unique among animals, and its discovery by the team in 1984 attracted immediate scientific and media attention around the world. Carden is a board member of OceanNEnvironment.

Jennifer Hayes - Honorary Editor

Jen is an aquatic ecologist who has collected a couple of graduate degrees in zoology, marine and fisheries biology. She came into underwater journalism (photography and writing) out of sheer necessity to enliven dull scientific presentations and publications. To put it simply, strong images of ancient sturgeons spawning, hatching, migrating are infinitely more captivating to an audience than bar graphs and pie charts. Photography and science lead to natural history articles and then into popular journalism. Jen formed a partnership with David Doubilet in 1999 and co-founded the stock photo company; Undersea Images Inc. Jen and David co-photograph and write for assignment features for numerous domestic and international publications, ad shoots and book projects.

David Doubilet

David is the world’s most celebrated underwater photographer with over fifty stories published in National Geographic. David challenges himself is to redefine photographic boundaries each time he enters the water. His passion is the undersea majesty of light and how to capture it. Completely at home on a coral reef, a World War II wreck, a deep dark fjord or among the great giants in our sea, David has relentlessly pursued the many hidden layers of coral reefs around the globe. His cold water work has immersed him in the rich waters of New Zealand, Tasmania, Scotland, Japan, the Northwest Atlantic and Northeast Pacific. Recent photographic journeys have taken him into some of the largest freshwater systems on our planet such as the great Okavango Delta system in Botswana and the St. Lawrence River.

Emory Kristof - Honorary Editor

Emory's photography has discovered the unexplored worlds of the deep sea. In August 1998 Kristof's pictures of the Titanic were presented in the National Geographic magazine article, "Tragedy in Three Dimensions." The pictures, taken in 1991 employing high-intensity lighting systems, achieved unprecedented detail due to advances in 3-D computer video-editing. Born in 1942, Kristof studied journalism at the University of Maryland at College Park and received a bachelor's degree in 1964. Kristof was a National Geographic staff photographer from 1964 to 1994 and has produced 39 articles for the National Geographic magazine. Kristof's accomplishments have earned many awards for both writing and photography, including the NOGI Award for Arts from the Underwater Society of America in 1988 and an Explorers Club Lowell Thomas Award for Underwater Exploration in 1986. That same year Kristof received the American Society of Magazine Publishers Innovation in Photography Award for their photographic coverage of the Titanic. Kristof was presented with the 1998 J. Winton Lemen Fellowship Award by the U.S. National Press Photographers Association "for being one of our profession's most imaginative innovators with particular attention to pictures from beneath the ocean brought to the readers of National Geographic magazine."

Stan Waterman - Honorary Editor

Stan has been at the forefront of scuba diving since its inception as a recreational sport both at home and throughout the world. Stan was co-director of underwater photography and the second unit in the production of The Deep, a movie based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel. More recent productions include documentaries for ABC's "Spirit of Adventure" series and the "Expedition Earth" series on ESPN. Stan has received numerous honours and awards for his work in television, including five Emmies, two Gold Medals from the U.K. Underwater Film Festival, four Golden Eagles, a lifetime Achievement Award from the Miami Expo and from Boston Sea Rovers, the Cousteau Diver of the Year Award, the Richard Hopper Day Memorial Medal from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and most recently has been inducted to the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame.

Doug Perrine - Honorary Editor

Doug is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost marine wildlife photographers. His photographs have been reproduced in virtually every major nature magazine in the world, as well as in thousands of books, calendars, greeting cards, posters, etc. His photography has won a number of awards, including the prestigious BBC/ British Gas Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in the animal behaviour category and the Nature's Best/ Cemex competition in the Professional Marine Wildlife category. He is also the author of seven books on marine life, and numerous magazine articles.

Gerald Allen PhD - Honorary Editor

Gerald is an internationally renowned authority on the classification and ecology of coral reef fishes of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. He is the author of 31 books and 400 scientific publications. He has an intimate knowledge of fish life on coral reefs, having logged more than 7,000 dives. Field studies form an integral part of Dr. Allen’s research, probably more so than any other marine biologist. He received a Ph.D. in marine zoology from the University of Hawaii in 1971, having done his thesis on anemonefishes. He served as Curator of Fishes at the Western Australian Museum in Perth for 24 years before leaving to take a position with Conservation International as their Science Team Leader. He is a past President of the Australian Society for Fish Biology, an honorary foreign member of the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology, and a recent recipient of the prestigious K. Radway Allen Award for Outstanding Contributions in Ichthyological Science.

Wyland - Honorary Editor

Marine life artist Wyland has developed an international reputation for his commitment to marine life conservation. Most notable, is his monumental marine life murals, the Whaling Walls. Spanning thousands of square feet, these massive works of art expose the thrilling diversity and beauty of life that exists below the surface of our ocean planet to more than one billion people each year. Today, this multi-faceted artist works in multiple mediums, from oils, water colours, acrylics, Japanese ink paintings, bronze sculptures, fine art photography, and mixed media.

Howard and Michele Hall - Honorary Editor

Howard and Michele are perhaps best known for their underwater IMAX films - Into the Deep 1994, Island of the Sharks 1998 respectively. Howard's career as an underwater natural history film producer, cinematographer, still photographer and writer began in the early 1970's. His photographs have been published internationally in hundreds of books and magazines including: Life, Natural History Magazine, National Geographic, GEO, Terre Sauvage, London Illustrated News, and BBC Wildlife. Howard has authored several books including Sharks, Dolphins, The Kelp Forest, Successful Underwater Photography, and Secrets of the Ocean Realm. Michele Hall is an accomplished still photographer whose images have been published by National Geographic, Fathoms, National Wildlife, Ocean Realm, and many other magazines and books. Howard and Michele have won seven Emmy Awards.

Christopher Lee – Editor Emeritus

Christopher was the co- founder of Asian Geographic and the managing editor for six years until 2005. Chris was also behind the successful transformation of Scuba Diver Australasia, and was its managing editor until 2005. He has worked on a range of marine conservation issues including the successful Say No to Shark fins campaign. Chris has also served on the board of OceanNEnvironment. Building on his early career in economic research, he is currently a Senior Economist with the Department of Environment and Climate Change (NSW) in Australia.

Laurent Ballesta – Honorary Editor

Laurent is a marine scientist, photo journalist and documentary maker for the French TV program Ushuaia Nature. He was the youngest photographer to have won three Gold diver awards at the World Festival of Underwater Pictures. In In 2005, Laurent authored with Pierre Descamp "Planete Mers" - the book was later translated into five languages and published by National Geographic. He was the first to capture the Coelacanth in their habitat at 110m. Laurent is also the author for "Secrets de Mediterranee" which was the first to reveal the deep water (180m) of the Mediterranean Sea.

Cabell Davis PhD – Oceanographic in Residence

Cabell is a Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and is the Director of WHOI's Ocean Life Institute with over 30 years' experience in plankton ecology. He has conducted research on 50 oceanographic cruises and co-developed the Video Plankton Recorder, an underwater video microscope with automatic imaging of high-resolution fragile plankton data. He recently worked with MIT engineers to develop a small underwater digital holographic camera for imaging plankton. He is now modeling the impact of climate change on the fisheries ecosystem.

Evonne Ong – EDITOR

altDiver, dancer, educator, editor, pharmacist, photographer: that just about sums up ‘Evonne Ong'. A pharmacist with a Masters in Pharmacology, she is currently practising and lecturing in Singapore. An avid diver since 1998, her love for nature, the ocean and wildlife conservation, led her to take an interest in underwater photography and eventually cross paths with Ocean Geographic. After a good deal of cajoling by Michael Aw, she finally started (with great apprehension) editing her first issue in April 2011 and has not looked back since. What about the bit on dance, you might ask. Well, that you will have to ask her in person when you meet her!

Alex Rose – Science EDITOR

altAlex Rose holds a B.S. in Biology, a M.S. in Aquatic Biology, and has a wide variety of experience in the biological sciences including, but not limited to, bioacoustics research, exhibit construction, science writing, teaching, public presentation, and aquatic animal husbandry and breeding. Alex is also a professional violinist, photographer, PADI Divemaster, and lover of all things aquatic. She is currently the Managing Editor for OGX, the Science Editor and a principle writer for Ocean Geographic Magazine, and is a free-lance science writer and editor as well. Alex also composes violin pieces for use in ocean themed films and exhibitions. Her driving goal is to find ways to protect our world’s precious marine habitats through diving, writing, photography, education, and research.

Miriam Stein Battles - Photo Editor

As a photo editor specializing in nature, Miriam Stein Battles has worked on magazines, books and websites. Combining her marine conservation background with her photo professional skills, Miriam has worked for nonprofits such as National Geographic Society, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy. Miriam much enjoys using her formal knowledge of marine conservation to further the awareness and protection of underwater environments and species. She was a photo editor for the Smithsonian Sant Ocean Hall as well as the companion book, “Smithsonian Ocean.” Miriam has been a certified diver since she was fifteen.

 

 

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