Meet the Team

Jonathan Bird

Jonathan fell in love with the ocean in the 1980s when he learned to dive in college. Already an avid photographer, he combined scuba diving and photography to create what would eventually become not only his passion, but his profession. Although Jonathan has had a few close calls with dangerous animals like sharks, his worst underwater injuries have come from pointy sea urchins and crown-of-thorn sea stars. He was once head-butted by an angry dolphin. None of these things have dampened his enthusiasm for the excitement of underwater exploration.

Jonathan is an Emmy Award-winning underwater cinematographer and producer, IMAX film director, president of the non-profit organization Oceanic Research Group as well as a widely published author, award-winning assignment cinematographer, photographer and speaker. He is the author of 7 books, director of over 40 films, and the youngest ever inductee of the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame.

Christine Bird

Christine credits friends from medical school for the path towards becoming a part of the Jonathan Bird’s Blue World team. Over dinner one night they convinced her to learn to scuba dive. So, at the end of her first year of medical school, she not only passed her classes but got certified to scuba dive. She soon joined a local dive club and learned a great deal from the members about the underwater world. There she also met Jonathan and began her next adventure in diving and an apprenticeship in underwater photography and filmmaking. One of her favorite dives is the Airplane Graveyard in Kwajalein Atoll which she first visited on a film project with Jonathan in 2001.

Noah Ramirez

Noah joined the team as an film student intern and spent a year learning the ways of Blue World shooting and editing before joining us as a full time cameraman/editor in 2022.  

Tim Geers

The big pond out in back of Tim's boyhood home was the beginning of his love of watery animals. Much to his mother's dismay, he collected dozens of bullfrogs, tadpoles, crayfish (tiny freshwater lobsters) and water bugs, and stored them in homemade tanks in his basement. He'd even grab big jellied gobs of frog eggs and watch them hatch into tadpoles and grow legs. Now, "Cameraman Tim" has traded in the tadpoles for the sharks, whales and stingrays he sees during his adventures shooting Jonathan Bird's Blue World.

Tim is an Emmy Award-winning cinematographer/field producer and a news videographer for WCVB-TV in Boston (the ABC affiliate). An avid diver and underwater cameraman, Tim brings his exceptional attention to detail to the television screen for Jonathan Bird's Blue World as both a cameraman and director. You will frequently hear him telling Jonathan "You can do better. One more time with feeling!"

www.timgeers.com

Julia Cichowski

Julia started diving in 1998 and was instantly hooked. For her there's nothing quite as relaxing as being underwater.  "When you're diving what you hear most is your own breathing, and your body can feel almost weightless. It's an incredible feeling."  Julia loves to dive in her local New England waters, but also enjoys travels to tropical climates for Blue World.  Some of her most memorable diving experiences have been petting a Tiger Shark, having a Harbor Seal lie on her lap, and swimming with Whale Sharks.

Professionally, Julia's career is in information technology and she has worked in Financial Services for over 20 years. Her planning and leadership skills have come in very handy as a Line Producer for Blue World. Julia organizes every aspect of a production from budgeting and expedition planning all the way through to assisting with the shots underwater. She makes sure we come home with all the shots we need to edit a segment.

Todd Kelly

"Cameraman Todd" fell in love with the water at an early age. His first scuba experience was in 1979 in a lake in Pelham, New Hampshire. A few years later he received his open water certification. He was twelve at the time and has been diving ever since. “I have always found the water calming and peaceful, but it was not until I began diving with sharks, that I learned to be totally relaxed in the open ocean.” Todd is an attorney. He spent many years in the film and video industry writing software for use in special effects. He has worked with many Academy Award winning special effects houses and contributed software tools used in popular films. He is an avid photographer and painter. He is a cameraman both above and below water for Blue World as well as our 3D graphics expert.

Art Cohen

The funny thing about Art is that he works on all these underwater films, but doesn’t dive. But he loves making stories about the ocean and working with Jonathan. Art has three Emmy awards, two that he shares with Jonathan. Art has made programs for PBS, National Geographic, WGBH, A&E, The Family Channel, USA Network, and WCVB-TV, Boston. He also works on the radio part-time as a news anchor on all-news radio station WBZ in Boston. As he explains, “I have a face for radio.” Art is also the announcer for Jonathan Bird’s Blue World; he’s the guy who tells you what’s coming up next. And one more thing. He teaches in the film program at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Massachusetts. Guess he likes to be busy.

Art started by working in radio back in 1967, and gradually worked his way into television and documentary production. At WGBY-TV in Springfield, Massachusetts, he produced a series on the environment in 1973. In 1976 he went to work for WGBH-TV in Boston as a reporter for its news program and later produced a series of local documentaries and public affairs specials. He produced for the PBS medical series Bodywatch and was senior producer for The Western Tradition, a 52-part instructional series on the history of western civilization funded by CPB/Annenberg. He also produced dozens of segments and programs for the daily magazine show Chronicle on WCVB-TV in Boston. He has worked with Jonathan since making underwater films since 1994.

Bill Murphy

"Cameraman Bill" is a full time senior aquarist at the New England Aquarium, and the only member of the Blue World team who actually is a marine biologist!  He first joined our film crew on a shoot at the Georgia Aquarium in 2010.  In 2016, he became a cameraman as part of our Giant Pacific Octopus episode (where he was also on camera as an octopus expert!)  Since then Bill has shown his camera skills on Blue World assignments in Abu Dhabi, Oman, and Maryland.  

Bruce Zimmerman

Bruce plays guitar, piano and drums, and loves his job because he gets to write and play music all day long. When he was 11 years old, his best friend started taking drum lessons. Bruce decided to take guitar lessons, so they could form a rock band. Bruce eventually went to music school because he wanted to become a music teacher. But fate had other plans and he now writes music for films and video. Bruce's wife probably fell in love with him because he wooed her with some James Taylor songs on their 3rd date.

Bruce is the Emmy Award-winning owner of Sound Productions, a film scoring studio located in Hartford, CT. He has scored over 500 programs for clients such as AT&T, IBM, PBS, FOX Network, The Learning Channel, National Geographic Television and many more. He is a member of ASCAP and the International Documentary Association (IDA).

Mia Peluso

Mia has been diving for almost ten years. She has always loved the water and learned to dive so she could stay underwater longer than one breath would allow. Mia loves the feeling of being in a different world when she is diving. She enjoys diving both locally in her native New England, and around the world. One of her favorite spots to dive is Eastport, Maine.

She met Jonathan through a mutual friend a started to assist the JBBW team. "It is a joy working on Jonathan Bird’s Blue World! I see how passionate Jonathan and the crew are about getting the show done. It is a lot of work (and a lot of fun) to put together the segments for each show, but the end result is worth it."

Pierre Séguin

For as long as he can remember, Pierre was a "collector." As a kid, he collected everything from rocks to insects to birds, fish and reptiles. His room was filled with jars, cages and aquariums of all sizes. Dozens of insect boxes filled the remaining space in his room. Today, there are no more jars and cages, as he traded his nets and traps for cameras to collect, capture and show to everyone all the wonders and beauty of nature. To take his cameras underwater was the next step. He met Jonathan on a dive trip to Cayman in 2003 and they have been great friends ever since.

Pierre is an Emmy Award-winning underwater cinematographer who graduated from the University of Montreal as a biologist and zoologist. His credits include Discovery Channel, PBS, 2nd unit cinematographer for Secrets of the Reef and director of photography for Passion-Plongée ("The Passion of Diving") a dive travel series for Canadian TV. He is also our resident French speaker!