Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic has announced the newest additions to its lineup of guest speakers for the 2023/24 Antarctica season. Passengers can enjoy exclusive experiences featuring renowned individuals from the worlds of science, exploration, literature, music, photography, and more.
Latest additions include the following guest speakers:
- Mensun Bound, a Triton Fellow in maritime archeology at St Peter’s College, Oxford, and the director of the first academic unit for underwater archeology in England. Known as the “Indiana Jones of the Deep,” Bound has conducted wreck surveys and excavations all over the world in a career that spanned 40 years. During that time he excavated one of the oldest known shipwrecks (600 BC) and, in 1997, he used saturation diving methods to carry out the deepest shipwreck excavation ever. In 2019, Bound was director of exploration for the first search to find Shackleton’s Endurance and three years later, it was found upright, largely intact. Participating itinerary: “Journey to Antarctica: The White Continent” (November 18, 2023)
- Dr. Robert Bindschadler, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a past president of the International Glaciological Society, is both a NASA Emeritus scientist and a senior research scientist at Morgan State University. Dr. Bindschadler’s career spanned more than 30 years at NASA where he retired in 2010 as the chief scientist of NASA’s Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory and a senior Fellow of the Goddard Space Flight Center. He maintains an active interest in glaciers and ice sheets and has led 16 Antarctic field expeditions to study dynamics of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Participating itinerary: “Journey to Antarctica: The White Continent” (November 27, 2023).
- Christian Cooper, the host and a consulting producer for the upcoming National Geographic series “Extraordinary Birder,” took up birding at an early age thanks to his father, a biology teacher, and inherited an activist streak from both his parents, African Americans who had marched for justice and equality in the Civil Rights era. Cooper advocates for greater, safer access to green spaces for all, with a focus on outreach to youth in underserved communities. He continues to seek synergy at the intersections of storytelling, progressivism and environmentalism, and he has had the privilege of traveling the globe to find birds and to meet scientists and conservationists who are working to help birds thrive. Participating itinerary: “Journey to Antarctica: The White Continent” (December 7, 2023).
- Peter Hillary is the son of Sir Edmund Hillary—the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest with his climbing partner Tenzing Norgay in 1953—and the first second-generation to climb Mount Everest. Hillary has climbed the Seven Summits (the highest mountain on each of the seven continents), and he has been on over 40 mountaineering expeditions around the world. In 1999, Peter established a new overland route across Antarctica to the South Pole on an 84-day ski expedition. Two of the five Ross Sea routes to the South Pole were established by members of the Hillary family—Ed Hillary via the Skelton Glacier in 1958 and Peter Hillary via the Shackleton Glacier in 1999. Participating itineraries: “East Greenland: Wild Shores of the High Arctic” (September 6, 2023) and “Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falklands” (October 29, 2023).
For more information, visit www.expeditions.com.
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