David Doubilet
Academy of Achievement
David Doubilet first fell in love with the undersea world as a child, snorkeling off the north coast of New Jersey. At age 12, he wrapped a Brownie camera in a plastic bag to take his first underwater pictures. He trained rigorously to excel as both diver and photographer; within a year of graduating from Boston University in 1970, he shot his first story for National Geographic, a relationship that continues to this day. In addition to contributing photographs and columns to a host of travel, nature and diving magazines, he has published half a dozen books of his astonishing images. Both inspired artist and fearless explorer, his expeditions have taken him around the world -- from the Caribbean to the South Pacific, from the Indian Ocean to the Galapagos Islands -- capturing the amazing creatures, brilliant scenery and otherworldly light of the ocean's depths. In reefs and caverns of fluorescent coral, he has recorded the most intense colors on the planet, as seen in his books, Water