Our staff

Adam was brought up in the countryside of Essex, England. He began sailing at the age of nine and by 12 was already working on the local river.

By the age of 16, he had a small fishing boat and was working on boatyards, taking tourists to see local seal colonies and helping out on the local lifeboat.

Adam later joined the British Armed Forces and was posted in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the UK. He also served in Kenya as a boat operator. In 2002 Adam joined the police and spent several years on a specialist unit working across the UK with his search dog, Charley.

Since Adam was young, he dreamed of working in the Antarctic like his uncle, who had worked there in the late 1980s. In 2014 Adam left the police to work as a boating officer for the British Antarctic Survey at King Edward Point, South Georgia, where he spent just over a year.

Adam studied at Middlesex University and often gives lectures on history. In 2017 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society while working as a guide and consultant.

In 2020 Adam began working fulltime for Oceanwide Expeditions as their field operations manager. He holds a commercial masters certificate and instructs in several marine disciplines. Adam enjoys diving, climbing, kayaking, and other outdoor activities.

Henrik is an experienced dive leader, rebreather instructor trainer, and one of the first dive masters to bring tourists diving in Antarctica.

Henrik has been diving for over 25 years and teaches all levels of recreational and technical diving up to Advanced Trimix CCR.

He runs the IART (International Association of Rebreather Trainers) Regional Office for Northern Europe and is a member of the IART Board of Advisors.

Henrik is a keen wreck diver and has been involved in deep-wreck expeditions all over the world. Some of the interesting wrecks he has visited are the WW2 disasters General von Steuben and Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic as well as the HMS Victoria ("the vertical wreck") at 145 meters (475 feet) off the Lebanese coast.

His interest in both the ocean and space has engaged him in projects with the European Space Agency (Mars500 Project) and SeaSpace Exploration and Research Society (Project Poseidon), among others.

He has a military background, having served in peace keeping and enforcing missions in the Middle East and former Yugoslavia.

He has been leading dive expeditions in Antarctica and the Arctic for almost 20 years in remote and challenging waters, many of which have never been dived before.

Henrik holds an M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering and works in the automotive industry when not traveling the polar regions.

He has lived and worked in Tokyo for two years but currently lives in India with his wife, three teenage daughters, and five-year-old son.

Born near the German city of Cologne, Joachim Schiel grew up some distance from the coast. His first contact with vessels came from the yearly sailing trips he made with a youth group on the Baltic.

After finishing school, serving in the military, and working a few different jobs, he started an apprenticeship in boat building. It was not long, however, before he realized he would rather work on vessels at sea than in the shipyard.

So in 1998, he started his sailing career on tall ships. Over the following years, he sailed during the summer and attended nautical college in Enkhuizen during the winter. This led to sailing on many different vessels all over the world before he became a captain in 2006.

He first sailed to Svalbard in 2009 and instantly fell in love with the Arctic, preferring to sail in the far north ever since. He has been on Rembrandt van Rijn since 2017, making voyages in Northern Norway, Svalbard, and East Greenland.

When Joachim is not sailing the polar regions, he likes to go hiking and diving in the warmer areas of the world.