Antarctica Cruises

Jonathan is a native of England, graduating BSc Geology with Geography from the University of North London in 1984. He travelled and lived in France and Spain for four years, before training as a naturalist with the Galápagos National Park Service in 1988. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London in 1989.

For nearly three decades, Jonathan has worked in the Galapagos Islands and has several thousand dives in the surrounding waters. An early fascination with whale sharks led to the founding of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project where he is the Project Founder and Director.

He has also worked in the Amazon, Antarctica, the Arctic, Africa, Central and South America, and Indonesia as a diver, photographer on land and underwater, leading and participating in expeditions and expedition travel. In 2009, he led a dive expedition to explore the undersea world of Antarctica in a 70 ft sailboat. On screen, he appeared on “BBC's Planet Earth II” and is the star of the documentary “Galapagos: Secrets of the Ocean Giants.”

For the past 30 years, Susan has lectured and lead expeditions in places like the Amazon, the Canadian Arctic, and Greenland – just to name a few. Her work hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2016, Adie Cove, an inlet on Antarctica’s western coast, was named for Susan in recognition of her work in responsible polar tourism and conservation. She is also the Chair of IAATO's (International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators) Field Operations Committee.

Her work for G Adventures has included collaborating with Planeterra and the Expedition’s onboard team to develop the Ocean Health Fund, a program that helps support organizations that work to protect the health of our oceans.

Meru grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina and went on to study tourism in university where she won a scholarship from the United Nations to specialize in disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. She went on to work for the Argentinean Tourism Board and eventually started working with Expedition ships shoreside until she jumped onboard as Expedition Guide, which is where she most loves to be. She has a keen interest in history, culture, geography and nature, which propelled her to start lecturing in the capacity of Polar Historian. She loves to share her passion about the polar regions and strongly believes that people can only protect what they care about.

She splits her time between guiding in Antarctica and the Arctic, consulting for community-based sustainable tourism development projects, as well as exploring and hiking wherever she can find mountains.

John Kernan has been working in the expedition cruise industry for the past 24 years as a lecturer, naturalist, Zodiac driver, and expedition leader. He has led trips to all seven continents and over one hundred countries, with a keen focus on the polar and tropical regions. Since 1991 he has travelled the high Arctic during the northern summer, splitting time equally between the North Pacific (Alaska and Siberia) and the North Atlantic (Svalbard and Greenland). During the austral summer months, he makes his way deep south to Antarctica, where he has completed more than 150 trips to the great white continent.

He graduated from Humboldt State University in 1989 with a double major in Marine Biology and Zoology. He focused graduate work on invertebrates of the Pacific Northwest while working as a docent at the California Academy of Science’s Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. While travelling with the organization as a guide and lecturer he found his natural calling as an expedition staff member. In his spare time, he enjoys birding, botany, astronomy, invertebrate zoology, photography, writing, backpacking, scuba diving, and skiing. He currently makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Matthew has been working as an ecotourism guide for the last 15 years, mostly in British Columbia, Washington, Antarctica and the Arctic. He specializes in vessel based operations focused on marine mammals in remote ocean habitats and sensitive ecosystems with an emphasis on facilitating research, citizen science, and conservation through tourism. He manages his own extension of Orca Spirit Adventures through a tour operation out of Port Renfrew, British Columbia that has access to a government protected sanctuary for critically endangered whales.

Having spent every day over the last decade in designated protected wilderness areas has given insight, experience and knowledge of sustainable practices where following set guidelines or regulations is paramount. He is also a specialist in education, providing more than a tourism product, where all levels of the experience he provides is deeply focused on teaching and inspiring his clients about respectful practices in nature and how to be more involved in conservation.

This cumulative experience has put Matthew in various leadership roles throughout his career and he has trained countless guides on emergency procedures, vessel operations in extreme conditions, facilitating research and following guidelines where the safety of all personnel and wildlife is top priority.

Sarah grew up on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, which helped lead to her passion for marine wildlife and outdoor adventure. She has since spent her entire life in the pursuit of working close to nature, such as her years spent as a captain running ocean wildlife tours in British Columbia.

She has spent the past several years as a captain supervising an entire fleet of whale watching vessels. Here she has the privilege of operating the only eco adventure vessel out of a small, secluded town in a remote ocean wilderness off the west side of Vancouver Island. In this remote setting she records important sighting data on Bigg’s orca, humpbacks, gray whales and most importantly the critically endangered southern resident orca.

It only seemed natural to bring her skills to the polar regions, a place where her love of the ocean, glacial landscapes, and marine mammals can be experienced all together. Sarah is most happy in Antarctica while guiding kayak trips through its pristine ice-filled waters.

Eric is a professional mountaineer and documentary photographer who specialises in landscape, mountaineering and wildlife photography in the Alps, Himalayas and polar regions.

In 2016, he was the first foreigner to graduate from the Khumbu Climbing Center in Nepal with the famous mountain tribe Sherpa. He also received a professional ice climbing and mountaineering qualification having led and climbed more than 35 mountains including Everest, and he has worked for the Hong Kong Mountain National Team.

His passion for the outdoors and extreme environments brought him to the world of expedition cruising. He has extensive experience in the polar regions having worked aboard the G Expedition for several seasons in both the Arctic and Antarctica.

Jeffrey Garriock is a Toronto-based Director & Cinematographer. He works mainly making films about Science, Natural History, and Ocean Conservation. His fascination with the ocean dates back to age 15 when he was able to scuba dive for the first time on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Jeff has worked making films with National Geographic, Mission Blue, the Toronto Raptors NBA team, and in over 60 countries around the world. He has shot everywhere from inside the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to the seas beneath Darwin's Arch in the Galapagos islands. Jeff has worked in the polar regions since 2014 when he visited Svalbard aboard the G Expedition for the very first time. Since then, filmmaking has taken him everywhere from Hudson's Bay seeking out Polar Bear cubs, to Iceland in the dead of winter diving between the continental plates, and all up and down the Antarctic peninsula chasing ice, penguins, whales, and once in a lifetime experiences. Increasingly attracted to conservation stories, Jeff hopes to shine a light on situations that need our attention - even those that may seem quite far away from our regular lives. The more we learn about our planet, the more we begin to care about it - and the harder we will work to protect it. Through films, videos and photographs, Jeff hopes to help inspire those feelings.