Meet the staff

The backbone of Biosphere Expeditions

Biosphere Expeditions employs a global team of wildlife professionals who all contribute to the success of the organisation: expedition leaders, scientists, field-based and administrative staff. Their roles are as diverse as their backgrounds, but they all share a love of the outdoors and wildlife.

Here are just two of our team. More can be found at www.biosphere-expeditions.org/staff.

Dr. Jean-Luc Solandt is a Londoner with a degree in Marine Biology from the University of Liverpool. After graduating, he spent a year diving on the Great Barrier Reef assisting field scientists in studies on fisheries, and the ecology of soft corals and damselfish. He returned to the UK and enrolled in a Ph.D. in sea urchin ecology in Jamaica, based both in London and Jamaica. Amadeus DeKastle has been living and working in Kyrgyzstan since 2009. Born in Germany and with a US passport, he holds a Masters degree in entomology from the University of Nebraska.

He went on to be an expedition science co-ordinator for projects in Tanzania, the Philippines and Fiji, and is now undertaking campaign and policy work in planning and developing Marine Protected Areas in the UK. He has been the Reef Check co-ordinator for the Maldives since 2005 and has thus far led three expeditions to undertake surveys inside and outside Marine Protected Areas on the islands. Jean-Luc has 800 dives clocked up since he trained to be a marine biologist 20 years ago.

© Noel van Bemmel

He currently works with NGO Plateau Perspectives in environmental conservation with a number of citizen science research projects. He is also a parttime lecturer at the American University of Central Asia in the Environmental Management Department. In 2014 he found out about Biosphere Expeditions’ work in Kyrgyzstan and signed up as a placement. After two years of volunteering with Biosphere Expeditions, he decided to jump in with both feet and joined the team in 2016.