| International Speakers |
With its unique flora and fauna, much of which is found nowhere else in the world, Seychelles regularly attracts a number of scientists eager to unlock the mysteries of the islands – and its surrounding seas. An eclectic group of marine enthusiasts with a wealth of knowledge are gathering in Seychelles for this year’s SUBIOS.
Please view the list of international guest speakers below for brief profiles and links to their scheduled presentations.
View our Local Guest Speakers. |
Neville Coleman
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Neville Coleman is one of the most accomplished underwater natural history authors in the world.
In 1963 his life reached a major turning point when he began spending his spare time diving in Sydney's harbour which eventually led to exploration on a larger scale.
In 1969, he conducted the "Australian Coastal Marine Expedition", a total of almost four years travelling 64,000 kilometres around the Australian coast, observing, recording, photographing and collecting many thousands of marine creatures. He succeeded in the first underwater photographic fauna survey of an entire continent ever attempted.
Since 1973, Neville has cross-referenced approximately 150,000 transparencies with specimens of marine animals and plants donated to Australian museums. Following the "Australian Coastal Marine Expedition", over 160 expeditions have been carried out in waters across the globe. Logging over 12,000 dives - and discovering over 450 species new to science, Neville's photographs are on display at most major museums and aquariums in Australia and at overseas institutions.
In July 1980, London ATV flew Neville to Papua New Guinea for a 30-minute documentary in their Nature Watch series. This was eventually shown throughout Europe, USA and New Zealand with excellent reviews and proved to be one of the most popular in the series.
Author of some 65 books, Neville has written and illustrated more underwater education natural history books than any other single person in the western world, and as such, is the most successful writer on marine life in Australia's history. His articles have been carried by over 150 magazines with photographs being reproduced by the National Geographic Society, Time-Life and Reader's Digest.
His "Education through Entertainment" audio-visual programs have been enjoyed by many thousands of people at over 300 world-wide venues. "Putting Nature back into Human Nature", his Nature Watch television program shown on National Geographic's Explorer series in 1986 has since been repeated several times reaching over 40,000,000 Americans. His lecture programs in the USA are highly successful and include conferences such as SEAS, MACNA, "Our World Underwater" and the Shedd Aquarium.
He is the first professional underwater photographer in Australia's history to win the highest commendation from both the Australian Photographic Society and the Australian Institute of Professional Photography.
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Edward A.M. Snijders
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Edward Snijders, born in 1950 in the Netherlands, started his diving career in the mid '80s. After progressing through the British BSAC training scheme, he qualified as an advanced instructor in 1991 - along the way taking a keen interest in underwater photography.
The start of the digital era led him to video, and eventually a departure from his previous life as an air traffic controller, which allowed him to travel and dive all over the world to capture various forms of marine life.
Mr. Snijders also partakes in scriptwriting and editing of movies, a creative but painstaking process fueled by his interest in new technology. More recently he has taken to High Definition Video and is recapturing previous footage in this new standard.
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Dr. Pedro Vieyra
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 Dr. Pedro Vieyra is, by profession, a doctor specialising in medical computing at a London teaching hospital.
Having taken up diving in 1986 through his interest in marine life and also by diving and kayaking, he began his forays into the underwater world wreck diving in northern Norfolk, off the islands and highlands of west and northern Scotland and club diving in the Red Sea and south- east Asia.
It was during the course of these dives that he became interested in underwater photography and joined the British Society of Underwater Divers (BSoUP) to hone his skills.
Since then, Dr. Vieyra has participated in several expeditions to the southern Red Sea, Indonesia and also to French Polynesia photographing sharks and whales. In 2004 and 2005 he was a contestant in Seychelles Underwater Film and Image Festival (SUBIOS).
Also in 2004 he won the BSAC Travel Club competition and a wonderful chance to visit the remote Northern Great Barrier Reef onboard the Undersea Explorer research vessel, his account of which is published in this month’s DIVE magazine.
Other awards won to date include those from ‘Beneath the Sea 2006’ held in New York, and the ‘British Underwater Image Festival’ 2006.
Dr. Vieyra has recently been big shark diving in Bahamas and Guadeloupe, also diving with Orcas in Norway and Humpback whales in Turks and Caicos. His current setup is a Nikon D200 in a Sea and Sea housing with twin Inon Z240 strobes.
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Dr. Andreas Fichtner
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 "Dr. Andreas" is a German Anesthesiologist at a university hospital who has additional specializations in diving and hyperbaric medicine, emergency medicine and medical simulation and education. Spending most of his time in the OR, the ICU or with medical students and postgraduate education, he still finds some time for diving medicine.
In Germany he offers regular consultation hours for scuba divers and provides emergency prevention and service for cave diving. Besides that, he and his partner form RESORTDOC, a non-profit-organization that provides high-standard medical service including diving medicine to hotels and resorts mainly in the Indian Ocean. In Seychelles, they take care of the Silhouette Medical Center and Hyperbaric Chamber.
Dr. Andreas Fichtner started diving himself in 1991 and has been to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Philippines, the Maldives and Seychelles. Most of his dives he spent in a drysuit in German quarries, occasionally under the ice, cave diving in mines and wreck diving in the Baltic Sea with underwater archeologists. Of course, he also likes underwater photography, but compared to the medical part of scuba diving, his photo-equipment and skills are rather basic.
www.resortdoc.com
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