Meet the Contributors

Wendee Holtcamp, The Writer
Freelance writer Wendee Holtcamp covers conservation, wildlife and adventure travel, which takes her to the far reaches of the globe – from the Himalayan foothills of Nepal in search of endangered red panda, to the Peruvian Amazon to report on community-based conservation with Yine Amerindians, to the Galapagos Islands to write about carbon-neutral travel. She grew up, in part, in a rustic log cabin in the Oregon woods with a hippie dad, who inspired her love of the outdoors. Holtcamp earned an M.S. in wildlife ecology from Texas A&M University in 1995, and has been published in magazines such as National Wildlife, Audubon, Smithsonian, Sierra, and Scientific American, as well as Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, and Animal Planet Online. Based in Houston, she also writes regularly about Texas water, wildlife and environmental issues for Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, and is working on a memoir about making peace between evolution and Christianity for Beacon Press, to be published in early 2010. This is her third trip to Australia but her first time diving with sharks. She hopes they are not hungry.

Cat Gennaro, The Photographer
Cat's career as an underwater photographer began in Maui, Hawaii, where she became a dive master, boat captain and naturalist. At home in the water, Cat developed an affinity for marine life that would help her become the first woman in the world to free-dive with a large mako and great white sharks. Cat's fearless diving exploits were featured in the Discovery Channel specials Diary of a Shark Man and Great White Shark: Uncaged, which was voted by viewers as one of the most popular Shark Week episodes ever. For the Discovery Channel Air Jaws specials, Cat photographed award-winning images of great white sharks exploding from the water to capture seals. In the making of these specials, Cat won several national awards, including in Sport Diver Magazine in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Her work has been featured in magazines such as National Geographic, and she was a contributing writer and photographer to the Field Guide to the Great White Shark (2003).