Undersea
Undersea Specialists
The video came into focus as the ship’s lounge. Rapt guests were glued to the HD monitors mounted around the room.
“We’re only about 30 feet deep here,” undersea specialist Alyssa Adler’s voice came over the lounges speakers. “Let me turn on my lights so you can see the colors, there’s so much sediment in the water that you lose colors just a few feet below the surface.”
The lights came on and a bright red crab scurried across the seafloor. A yellow sea star that had to be two feet across clung to gray rocks. There were purple corals, swaying kelp, and a sea lion popped into the picture to get a look at Alyssa, or perhaps play in the air bubbles she was exhaling.
This brightly colored, vibrant undersea wasn’t in the tropics—these guests were aboard National Geographic Quest in Alaska.
Lindblad Expeditions is deeply committed to the undersea, which is why nearly every expedition aboard the National Geographic fleet sails with a specialist who dives to capture photos and video of the benthic world to share with guests.
In the tropics, where the water is warm and the undersea wonders are well known, the undersea specialists also serve as a divemasters to help certified guests scuba dive to get a firsthand view. And in the tropics each ship sails with snorkeling gear for all guests aboard. When guests choose not to snorkel or dive, they may join the undersea specialist for a cruise aboard a glass-bottom Zodiac to get a glimpse of the life that lies beneath. In this case the undersea specialist can offer a live voiceover to illuminate all that is seen.
Polar regions are far from a cold, lifeless stretch, the seas of Antarctica and the Arctic are surprisingly rich and colorful environments filled with astonishing life forms. Guests marvel at the unexpected wonders and the thought-provoking talks and conversations they inspire. In these regions the undersea specialist has another tool at their disposal to explore—an ROV capable of diving up to 1,000 feet deep to see places never before seen by humans. In Norway, the undersea specialist even discovered a cold-water coral previously unknown to scientists.
The video came into focus as the ship’s lounge. Rapt guests were glued to the HD monitors mounted around the room. ...
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Meet Our Undersea Specialists
Undersea Specialist
Alyssa Adler
As a young marine biologist, Alyssa Adler has had the opportunity to work as a diver in many capacities. For several years, she was a dedicated AAUS scientific diver for University of North Carolina on an offshore reef ecology project, and has participated in several of NOAA’s reef survey missions. She has been diving with National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions as an underwater videographer and ocean educator since 2014 and has fostered a love for the poles and extreme cold-water diving, spending most of her time underwater in sub-freezing temperatures. In August of 2018 Alyssa was awarded a National Geographic Early Career grant with a focus on the remote and challenging Inian Islands of Southeast Alaska. She spent her grantee year focusing on select regional Alaskan bull kelp forests to tell the ancient story of Nereocystis with a new, modern twist, through the Inian Islands Institute and the National Geographic Society. As of September, 2020 Alyssa is an NSF funded Ph.D. student at Duke University, studying marine science with a focus on predator/prey interactions and shifts in trophic cascades over great latitudes.
Undersea Specialist
Chris Cook
A self confessed “animal nerd,” Chris falls under many titles: marine biologist, marine interpreter, dive master, science communicator, and naturalist. Chris was lucky enough to grow up on the East Coast of Australia, where there are no shortage of different coastal environments to explore. While growing up, his friends would be surfing while he would be under the waves, snorkel and mask on looking for fish and all the weird and wonderful creatures he couldn’t get enough of. This love of the ocean lead to him completing a Bachelor of Science in 2005. His passion for the ocean and connecting people with its inhabitants landed him in various roles in different zoos and aquariums, but it was the "wild" that was always Chris’s true calling. After working as a whale watching tour guide off the West Coast of Canada and moving back to Australia to work on the Great Barrier Reef, Chris never looked back. Since 2009 Chris’s specialty has been giving presentations on and taking people out to tropical environments, in particular to different parts of the Great Barrier Reef region. In recent years Chris has spent more time living on tropical islands or on ships cruising up and down the reef than on land. Chris’s passion for photography, nature’s creatures, and scuba diving has taken him from diving in the snow in Canada one week to diving in Mexico the next. He has followed his passion to develop his photography and interpretative skills through out Southeast Asia, all along the East Coast of Australia and to the magical Kimberley region off the west coast. The only passions of Chris’s not mentioned are reptiles, birds, insects, dogs, the entire macro world, and of course talking about all of the above over good coffee!
Undersea Specialist
Shaylyn Potter
Shaylyn was born and raised in small-town Oregon, which she credits for her unwavering love and respect for the natural world. Her passion for the outdoors and exploration began at a young age, and she spent her childhood taking full advantage of what Oregon had to offer—waterskiing, snowboarding, hiking, and camping. While studying abroad at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia in 2008, Shaylyn began scuba diving—a passion that unexpectedly shaped her career path. With academics following suit to her passion, she earned a Bachelor of Science in marine biology and a minor in chemistry from Oregon State University. Shaylyn’s insatiable curiosity has encouraged her to explore many underwater environments and travel to all 7 continents. Though she loves all sea critters, some of her favorites include: octopuses, nudibranchs (especially the Glaucus atlanticus), and plankton. Shaylyn’s focus in marine science is using photography education to increase public interest in marine knowledge and conservation. She hopes to spread her passion for our marvelously rich and important oceanic life and create new ocean advocates in our society. Shaylyn would like to encourage you to ditch your single-use plastic items and join her in using more sustainable options in your day-to-day lives (who needs straws, anyway?!). To see more of her work, follow her on Facebook and Instagram:Save.Our.Plankton
Undersea Specialist
James Hyde
James is a home-grown, free-range Pacific Northwest outdoorsmen. Born in Seattle and reared nearby on Vashon Island, he grew up in and surrounded by the Salish Sea. James has saltwater in his veins, but would be quick to point out we all do, echoing Carl Safina " We are, in a sense, soft vessels of seawater." Born with the travel bug, James was fortunate enough to spend time on four continents before graduating college. During his studies at Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment, James went to Australia and visited the Great Barrier Reef. He was never the same. A lifetime of playing in the productive, but opaque green water of the Northwest had offered him little firsthand experience of the creatures below its depths, but with a clear view of the colorful dramas playing out across the bottom of the tropical Pacific, he was hooked. Scuba diving and underwater ecology were solidified as his passion and after college, it took him to a dive shop in Seattle fixing gear, tidepooling with local middle school students, and generally making a spectacle of himself in the surf. Then unaware of expedition travel, James longed to blend his love for travel, conservation, and the marine environment. After a tip-off (and a reference from a childhood friend he joined the Lindblad Expeditions' team in 2016 as a Dive Buddy. Working across the fleet as a Naturalist and Expedition Diver, James learned all he could about the ecosystems of the beautiful and remote places our ships visit. Finally becoming an Undersea Specialist, he continues to be fascinated by the Ocean and all that is in it. He hopes to inspire conservation of the beautiful and unusual ecosystems that flourish in protected waters. Additionally, he hopes to further the contributions Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic make to the scientific community by engaging in citizen science projects, monitoring for ocean plastics in remote locations, and being involved with other partnerships from Universities, to Research Institutes, to conservation groups worldwide.
Undersea Specialist
Maya Santangelo
Maya was born and raised in Southern California, where her curiosity for the natural world was encouraged from an early age. Relocating to Sydney, Australia with her family at 11 years old, she learned to scuba dive, eventually becoming a PADI Instructor. Her fascination for the underwater world undoubtedly fueled her interest to study marine biology at James Cook University. Working as a professional guide in some of the world’s top dive destinations, including Palau and Mexico’s Guadalupe Island and Revillagigedo Archipelago, Maya realized a passion for sharing her love for the ocean with others, and the value of citizen science in the dive industry. In 2016, Maya was awarded the Rolex Scholarship for Australasia by the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society. Diving around the world for a year to work alongside leaders in dive expeditions, marine research and conservation, her experiences as a Rolex Scholar proved to be formative in cementing her passions and future career directions to make a difference for our blue planet. With an underlying drive to explore and understand life in the ocean, Maya’s aquatic endeavors have seen her diving and working on projects in a variety of marine environments across all seven continents. Whether counting the arms of giant sea stars in Antarctica, or identifying manta rays in French Polynesia, Maya is happiest when underwater. As part of the Lindblad Expeditions team, Maya looks forward to each dive as a new opportunity to share what would otherwise be out of sight-out of mind, and contribute to conservation through science, communication and education.
Undersea Specialist
Christine West
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. Christine is now a USCG certified 100-ton Captain and has traveled internationally full-time as a naturalist, underwater videographer and photographer, expedition leader, educator, PADI Scuba Diving Instructor and Divemaster for over a decade. Since 2013, Christine has spent her summers working as a naturalist in several regions in Alaska including the Kenai Peninsula, the Inside Passage, Ketchikan and Denali National Park. Her experiences guiding in remote regions around the state have taken her hiking through lush riparian forests, kayaking alongside orca whales and canoeing through ice chunks near calving glaciers. She has also enjoyed working as an in-water guide educating about echinoderms and other invertebrates in the kelp forests of Southeast Alaska. Christine’s interest in travel and wildlife has taken her to work above and below water in over 30 countries, spending significant amounts of time in Alaska, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Mexico, Turkey, Thailand, Vietnam and several countries in the Caribbean.
Undersea Specialist
Adam Maire
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. Growing up working outside on a cattle ranch in Nebraska, Adam’s love for nature started early in life. Through college he continued to learn about the natural world and sought out jobs that aided in his thirst for knowledge. After college, he joined the US Army and afterward began working around the world as a naturalist guide. Adam’s interests have taken him on great adventures in remote locations, spending several years as a backcountry expedition guide in Alaska, leading multi-day whitewater rafting, hiking and kayaking adventures—even scuba diving in glacially-fed lagoons with harbor seals and sea otters. He has enjoyed a vast array of incredible experiences from leading horseback wildlife tours through the jungles of Nicaragua observing howler monkeys and sloths to teaching scuba diving around isolated islands in South East Asia. In 2012, Adam made the Big Island of Hawaii his home, one of his favorite places to observe and photograph marine life such as coastal manta rays, pilot whales, humpback whales and tiger sharks. Pursuing his deep interest in marine biology, Adam earned his US Coast Guard Captain’s license in 2015. Being a Captain has enabled him to spend more time in and on the water, allowing better opportunities to understand and research the marine environment.
Undersea Specialist
Rachel Crane
Rachel is a Marine Ecologist, Master Scuba Instructor, and USCG 100-ton licensed Captain. She grew up homeschooled on an alpaca farm in Upstate NY, where her passion for the outdoors was initially cultivated. After attending a marine science summer camp in her teenage years, she fell in love with the ocean, and went on to earn degrees in Ecology and Marine Biology at Unity College in Maine. She spent time in Florida at MOTE Marine Laboratory researching coral disease ecology but found herself drawn into Eco Tourism as a way to more directly be involved in educating the public about our marine resources. Working with Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic has provided her the perfect balance between exploring, science, oceans, and mountains, while seamlessly allowing her to share her knowledge and passions in a meaningful and fulfilling way. She is often as excited, and smiling as widely, as those experiencing expeditions for the first time! She is just as happy camping and hiking as she is snorkeling and diving. This has instilled a desire to explore, live, and work in places all over the globe. She has backpacked her way through the jungles and beaches of Central America, spent several seasons exploring wild places in Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, snorkeled with humpback whales in Newfoundland, Canada, planted corals in the Florida Keys, and taken adaptive divers on trips to Cozumel, Mexico. When she is not on a Lindblad Expedition, she can be found in the Florida Keys at ocean orientated nonprofits that promote coral conservation, adaptive scuba diving, and citizen science.
Undersea Specialist
Patrick Webster
Patrick Webster is a marine media monkey politely pushing pixels as an underwater photographer and marine science communicator based out of Monterey Bay, California. Raised in the foothills of the French Alps and on the outskirts of Stockholm, Sweden, Patrick fell in love with the ocean from a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California when he was five years old. Awestruck by the rescued sea otters diving and blowing bubbles just behind the glass, he knew that whatever *this* is, *that* is what he was going to do—and so began his quest to become some form of marine mammal himself. After successfully sliming his way through marine biology and scientific diving classes as a UC Santa Cruz SCUBA Slug, Patrick has spent the last decade combining subtidal storytelling and his word asso-sea-ocean syndrome to entertain and educate about the wonders of our water world—with the kelp cathedral and its tasteful nudibranchs as his muse. Patrick’s passion to see the sea shared from the seashore has now grown into an award-winning science communication career at Monterey Bay Aquarium and as “@underwaterpat” online, with creations featured by National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy, The New York Times, BBC, TEDx and more. Patrick hopes that his work can joyfully bring his fellow “Earthlings” closer to the wonders of the Inner Space of Planet Ocean, to help inspire conservation of our pale blue dot on its storied journey around the sunfish.
Undersea Specialist
Carlos Navarro
Carlos J. Navarro is a biochemist specializing in marine biology, a M. Sc. in Environmental Management and a freelance wildlife photographer/author. Carlos has spent most of the last 30 years living along the shores of the Sea of Cortez and participating in numerous scientific, conservation and environmental education projects on the vaquita, marine invertebrates, sea birds, great white sharks, baleen whales, jaguars and crocodiles. Carlos’ six years of jaguar research provided the basis of ONCA MAYA, a non-profit organization dedicated to jaguar conservation based in Cancun, of which he is a founding member and still serves as a scientific advisor. He loves being underwater, either free-diving or using SCUBA gear and have had the chance to explore the underwater realms of Alaska, Mexico, Svalbard, the trans-Atlantic ridge islands, the Caribbean and both coasts of South America from Panama to Chile and Brazil to Argentina. As a wildlife photographer and author of numerous scientific and popular publications, he tries to share his deep passion and love of nature with the general public. Carlos is very interested in all kinds of wild creatures, particularly top predators; he first traveled to Alaska many years ago to photograph brown and grizzly bears in Katmai and Denali National Parks and returns to the Great State every year for some more ursine encounters. His photographs have been published by National Geographic, BBC, Wildlife Conservation, Reptilia, Especies, Cuartoscuro and many more Mexican and international magazines and books. His first book, Oleada de Vida, is a photographic essay about the Sea of Cortez, whereas his second, El Oso Negro en el Noreste de México , explains the life history of the poorly known but abundant black bears in Mexico’s northeast. He is currently working on a couple of new book projects, one about the natural history, cultural significance and conservation of the jaguar, and the other one about overfishing in the Sea of Cortez. Besides his loved Baja California, Carlos has traveled with Lindblad/National Geographic to the high Arctic of Svalbard, Iceland, Alaska, Antarctica and the Falklands, South Georgia, Azores, Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde and Easter islands, both Western and Eastern coasts of South America, the Galápagos, Cuba and the Amazon.
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