Jason first picked up a camera (a Pentax K1000) in high school and his first professional job was photographing and writing news and sports stories for his hometown community weekly newspaper, the Harrison Press, in the cornfields of southwest Ohio during the late 1990s.

Starting in 2020, Jason had an epiphany of sorts: scientists have never been more certain about the dire environmental and climate change problems facing humanity, but fewer people care about, or believe, those scientific findings than when he started university more than 25 years ago. Because more science seemed unlikely to change public perception, Jason decided to combine his photojournalism background and scientific expertise to tell informed stories about our planet. 

Jason’s research and photography career have taken him on expeditions to all seven continents. As a specialist in difficult-to-access environments, Jason has worked in underwater caves in Florida, the Caribbean and Africa, and inside glacier caves in Alaska, Greenland, Svalbard and Mt Everest. His work has been primarily been published by National Geographic, GEO and The New York Times.

When not on expeditions, Jason teaches courses in geology and scientific diving at the University of South Florida. He is happiest underwater.