Thomas Peschak is a National Geographic Explorer and photographer specializing in documenting the beauty and fragility of the world’s last wild places. Trained as a marine biologist, he embraced photography and storytelling after realizing his photographs could have a greater impact than scientific statistics. Peschak has covered some of the most critical conservation narratives of our time, resulting in 21 feature print stories for National Geographic magazine. His images and stories have won 18 Wildlife Photographer of the Year and seven World Press Photo Awards. He was also recently awarded National Geographic’s Eliza Scidmore Award for outstanding storytelling, as well as the National Geographic Photographer’s Photographer Award, the latter voted on exclusively by his peers.
On Instagram he inspires his audience of over 1.1 million people with tales from the conservation frontlines, trying to save endangered wildlife and critical habitats. A veteran of over 50 expeditions to some of the most remote and extreme corners of the world, 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 at National Geographic Live events on four continents, and his 2015 TED Talk “Dive Into an Ocean Photographer’s World” has been viewed more than a million times. He is the bestselling author of 8 books including Sharks and People and Wild Seas. His latest book Amazon: A River’s Journey from the Andes to the Atlantic will be published by National Geographic in March 2026.
As part of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Amazon Expedition, Peschak recently completed a 396-day 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 a 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 National Geographic magazine’s 136-year history to photograph an entire issue.
