I was born in
Weston-super-Mare, a seaside resort in the west of England. My father, Peter, was a sailor, and my mother, Wendy, a nurse; both continue to live in Weston, where they are enjoying a well-earned retirement. My eldest brother, Michael, lives in Nagoya, Japan; my elder brother Stephen lives in Greenhithe, England. Michael has put together a family website which you can visit
here.
Inspired by a combination of childhood influences -- the wildlife in our garden and the woods on the edge of town; the books on my parents' bookshelves, filled with stories and photos of the natural world; and my father's stories and photographs of his voyages in the Navy -- I knew by the age of sixteen what I wanted to do with my life: travel the world and write about wildlife and the environment.
I found some work writing a newsletter for an organization called the People's Trust for Endangered Species. I volunteered briefly at the famed Natural History Unit of the British Broadcasting Corporation. I worked for another environmental group called Care for the Wild. Just a few days after my eighteenth birthday, my first published article appeared in
New Scientist.
Early on, I became interested in writing about zoos and the role they played in conservation. As part of that, I wanted to know about dolphin shows, and so I began learning all I could about dolphins and their cousins, the whales.
The more I learned about whales, the more I learned about the environmental pressures they faced, from whaling to pollution to conflicts with fisheries. There was no organization in the United Kingdom devoted solely to the protection of dolphins and whales, and so in 1987, with my friends Sean and Margaret Whyte, I founded the Whale Conservation Society, later the
Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Two years later, I joined
Greenpeace International; until 1995, I was the organization's chief spokesperson on whaling issues, and was a leader of four anti-whaling voyages to the Antarctic and one to the Arctic.
Antarctica must be the most beautiful part of the world: largely unspoiled and untouched, much the way it would have seemed to Captain James Cook when he became the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle in 1773. And being a leader of a ship-bound expedition to the most hostile region on Earth is a uniquely challenging experience, providing an intense set of demands unlike anything I had experienced before, or have done since.
Consequently, after leaving Greenpeace and the life of a full-time activist, I had a hard time finding anything that provided the same kind of motivation. I returned to writing, and in 1996 was asked to join a new organization called
SeaWeb, which seeks to provide balanced information on marine conservation issues to the media and public. I still am associated with SeaWeb, as editor of the monthly
Ocean Update newsletter.
In 1998, I was given the opportunity to spend the summer in Alaska and the Russian Arctic, writing articles about climate change and its impact on wildlife and native peoples. It was an incredible experience: not only did I succeed in writing and selling plenty of articles and news items, I was also completely captivated by the region. I returned to Washington, D.C., where I was living at the time, long enough to pack up my life and move to Anchorage.
For seven years I lived in a little cabin on the shores of Cook Inlet. I wrote a couple of books and all in all had the best time of my life. Alaska is beautiful and alluring, and I was very sorry to say goodbye.
Eventually, however, I was forced to do just that. There are only so many opportunities for a freelance writer in the 49th State, and so I reluctantly returned to the outskirts of the nation's capital, and I now make my home in Alexandria, Virginia.
My writing career has taken something of an unanticipated left turn: through a series of unexpected events, I am also now cover boxing for
Reuters and
ESPN.com . It's a fascinating world, and I find writing about it interesting and fulfilling.
But that's my weekend job. My true calling remains writing about wildlife and the environment, and I am returning to that field with my new book,
The Ice Bear, which I will be researching and writing during 2008 and which will be published by Houghton Mifflin in 2009.
