Adam Ravetch

Marine naturalist, Arctic scuba diver, and award-winning wildlife filmmaker, Adam Ravetch has been involved in a myriad of projects that has taken him to the far corners of the earth. Dedicated to creative filmmaking, he strives to bring to the screen the unforgettable details of animals' lives and their relationship to mankind.

In his pursuit of the ultimate photographic challenge, Ravetch has become one of a handful of filmmakers to shoot beneath the Arctic ice cap. Even more unusual is his perseverance in the north with 15 years of experience working in the brutal, polar environment. The unforgiving Arctic has rewarded Ravetch with some of his most fantastic moments; his months long stakeout to film polar bears predating on walrus and a witness to the first moments of a newborn walrus calf with her mom. Many first-time-photographed events.

In 1990, Ravetch teamed up with his wife, director/writer Sarah Robertson to make five Arctic films, produced by their company Arctic Bear Productions, for National Geographic and Nature -- rare gems dramatizing the beauty and terror of the north. They have collected awards from around the globe including an Emmy.

Recently, Ravetch co-directed his first theatrical film for National Geographic Films and Paramount Vantage, ARCTIC TALE, released in theaters and on DVD world-wide.

In addition to their films, Ravetch is a sought after freelance cameraman. Recently he filmed a one-of-a-kind behavior sequence of a walrus herd defending and beating down an attacking polar bear for the BBC’s Planet Earth Series.

Ravetch’s career spans from the Red Sea to Micronesia but it is the Polar Sea that has captured his imagination. Whether experiencing the beauty under the domed cathedral of ice, or the pain of minus 40-degree wind chill on his hands, Adam is most rewarded when he can yank a great picture from the grips of the Arctic. Ravetch likens filming in the north to guerrilla warfare. You have to be ready for anything, change plans on a dime, willing to live on the land for months at a time, sometimes totally alone and be willing to eat just about anything. It’s been an unusual evolution for Ravetch, considering his origins as a California surfer and diver.

Born and educated in California, Ravetch received his BS in zoology from San Diego State University. At this time SCUBA diving for Ravetch became a passion. He took every Scuba course that was offered, and later, would even give lessons to a Middle East prince. While attending California State University, Ravetch completed shark research at the Graduate School of Marine Biology. Shortly after he received the Our World Underwater Scholarship, which enabled him to travel across North America meeting and learning from the greatest minds working in marine science. Impatient with science, Ravetch became interested in the more physical job of underwater photography and wildlife filmmaking.

With a view at helping to preserve the Arctic, and Ravetch and Robertson founded The Arctic Exploration Fund, an organization that seeks to discover and film the responses of Arctic wildlife reacting to the rapid environmental changes taking place in the North.

When not in the Arctic, Ravetch makes his home on Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia with Sarah, his three children and his boat.

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