Thomas Peschak is a National Geographic Explorer and photographer specializing in documenting the beauty and fragility of the world’s oceans, coasts and wild places. Trained as a marine biologist, he embraced photojournalism after realizing his photographs could have a greater conservation impact than scientific statistics. Peschak has covered some of the most critical conservation narratives of our time, and his stories have been featured in 20 National Geographic magazine editions. His recent magazine work includes “The Amazon’s First Storytellers” (June 2023) and “Niassa: The Myth of Wild Africa” (Sept. 2023). His images and stories have won 18 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards and seven World Press Photo Awards. He was also recently awarded National Geographic’s Eliza Scidmore Award for Outstanding Storytelling. 

Peschak is a founding director of the Manta Trust, the director of storytelling for the Save our Seas Foundation, and a senior fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers. He’s spoken numerous times at National Geographic Live events, and his 2015 TED Talk “Dive into an ocean photographer’s world” has been viewed more than 1 million times. As part of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Amazon Expedition, Peschak completed a 396-day-long exploration of the Amazon River Basin, documenting its wonders and challenges from underwater and topside perspectives. Starting with ice axes and crampons in the icy high Andes and finishing with scuba gear in the Atlantic Ocean, he created the first-of-its-kind comprehensive photographic archive of our planet’s most iconic and biodiverse river system. This body of work was published in October 2024, making Peschak only the second person in the Society’s 137-year history to photograph an entire magazine issue.

Photo by Thomas P. Peschak