Naturalist/Certified Photo Instructor icon Naturalist/Certified Photo Instructor

Michael Nolan

Michael Nolan was born in Bitburg, Germany to an Air Force family stationed there. His first experience of the ocean came at age 12, when he learned to snorkel in the Italian Mediterranean. At age 17 he moved to Tucson, Arizona and became a PADI SCUBA instructor, before starting a SCUBA diving business that specialized in diving trips to the Sea of Cortez.

Michael has since begun a new career in marine photography.  He worked with National Geographic dolphin researchers in the Bahamas throughout the nineties, as well as running trips to the Silver Banks in the Dominican Republic to study and photograph Atlantic Humpback Whales. Today he is an award-winning photographer who specializes in intimate portraits of marine animals.  He has traveled the oceans of the world in search of the world's most magnificent beings.  His photography has appeared in hundreds of magazines, calendars, and books in over 45 countries worldwide.  He currently "migrates" with the whales, spending his winters in the warmer tropical latitudes where whales mate and give birth and his summers in the cooler higher latitudes where animals migrate to feed.