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GEOFF GREEN
 Thirty-eight year old Canadian adventure educator Geoff Green has been leading expeditions and adventures from pole to pole for the past decade. Many notable organizations such as the Discovery Channel, World Wildlife Fund, National Audubon and the Smithsonian Institution enlist Geoff to lead their groups into the world's most remote and exciting regions. In 2004, Outpost Magazine named Geoff one of the "top six Canadian Explorers" to watch.
Geoff is the founder and director of the Canadian based organization www.studentsonice.com. An award-winning educational program dedicated to taking high school students, teachers and scientists from around the world on expeditions to both the Arctic and the Antarctic. The goal of the pioneering project is to give the world's youth a heightened understanding and respect for our planet's global ecosystem, and the inspiration to protect it.
 As an expedition leader, he is a veteran of 63 Antarctic expeditions and 24 Arctic expeditions. He has recently been spotted in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, on horseback in Patagonia, on the shores of Pitcairn Island, and in the rainforests of Madagascar. A former school teacher, Geoff has skippered yachts; taught skiing in the Swiss Alps; was the first person to water-ski in both the Polar Regions; has been three times through the Northwest Passage; and led the largest ever expedition to Antarctica during the Millennium. A fan of Sir Ernest Shackleton, Geoff has retraced parts of the Endurance journey six times, including in 1998 when he led the retracing expedition together with several descendants of Shackleton's crew.
When not leading expeditions, Geoff enjoys sharing his unique experiences by speaking (See Geoff’s ‘Presentations’) at schools, conferences and special events around the world. He is represented by the National Speakers Bureau and he has recently been a guest speaker at the Royal Geographical Society in London, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. He has taken dignitaries such as FW de Klerk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his expeditions, as well as leading scientists, explorers and celebrities, such as Diana Krall and Dan Ackroyd.
Geoff's most recent venture is as a partner in a 165-ft expedition sailboat called Sedna, named after the Inuit Goddess of the Sea, with the mission of becoming an ambassador for the world's ocean's and a platform for education, science and film. In 2002, Geoff sailed with Sedna through the Northwest Passage making a 5-hour TV series about Climate Change for "The Nature of Things", Télé-Québec, France 2 and France 5, and which won the 2004 Earthwatch Award.
Geoff and his expeditions have been featured extensively in international media, as well as in numerous documentaries. Geoff is a Fellow of The Explorer's Club, and regularly advises on conservation, film and expedition related projects around the world.
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RICHARD SEARS
Founder, researcher, and head of the Mingan Island Cetacean Study (MICS).
 Richard Sears was born in Paris, from a French mother and an American father. At eighteen, he took part in a training expedition in oceanography onboard a schooner, between Puerto Rico and Boston. It is during this trip that he encountered whales for the first time. He became completely spellbound.
In 1976, after having completed his studies in biology in Maine, he worked at the Matamec Salmon Research Station (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. In the summer of that year, he shared privileged moments with the whales of baie de Moisie. "I could do this the rest of my life," he said while contemplating these giants from his inflatable raft.
Afterwards, he became a naturalist onboard whale-watching vessels in Massachusetts and worked alongside the pioneers of whale research: David Sergeant, Steven Katona, William Schevill, William Watkins, and Roger Payne - all his greatest sources of inspiration. From them, he learned that in order to know whales one must spend a lot of time at sea with these giants.
It is with this motivation that Richard returned to Matamec and Mingan in 1979 to study blue whales. Along with Liz Lowe, Fred Wenzel, and Mike Williamson, Massachusetts biologists, he creates the Mingan Island Cetacean Society (MICS). Twenty-one seasons later, his passion remains, but he entertains a new inspiration: to welcome more and more post-graduate students into his team and provide new incentives on cetacean research. What is the most greatest achievement of his career? His research station now has wings. His greatest frustration? The surface of the water!
Who are the St. Lawrence blue whales? Please visit: www.rorqual.com/blue.htm |
