Undersea Specialists and Divemasters

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. ...

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

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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Undersea