James Dalton is an Honours Graduate of University College Dublin with a degree in English and History. He has been involved in Film and Video post–production for over two decades, and in that time has worked on a series of high end documentaries, many of which have received wide critical acclaim. He has collaborated with many of Ireland’s leading Producers and Directors in a period spanning the evolution of the industry from Film, to Digital Non-Linear Editing on tape, to full scale High-definition Post-production.
Recently, he has been working at Crossing the line Films, with producer John Murray, editing a series of major documentaries for the international market.

Among the many films he has worked on are, Craiceann Geal, Croí Marbh for TG4, Charlie Bird’s Arctic Journey for RTÉ and A Prayer for the Windhorse for the IFB. He is currently editing a major wildlife series for RTÉ called Wild Journeys.

In the last fourteen years, John Murray has directed over 30 films for some of the world’s leading broadcasters and has won numerous national and international awards. He has also produced 70 other films with leading Irish and international directors.

John is managing director of Crossing the Line Films, one of Ireland’s leading factual producers for the international market. Specialising in documentaries that bring viewers to the remotest corners of the Earth, CTL were the first Irish documentary production company to move into HD. Working with a wide range of Irish and international broadcasters, their films have broadcast in over 150 countries.

John graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a degree in Zoology before joining RTÉ as a presenter and reporter on nine different series of science, environmental and health programmes. He was co-author of Lonely Planet’s first ‘Ireland, Travel Survival Kit’. In 1991 he made his first film chronicling the first Irish expedition to attempt an 8000 metre Himalayan peak and since then has made films on Everest, the North Pole, through the Northwest Passage, across Siberia and the Sahara amongst many other locations and still likes to shoot and direct whenever he gets the chance.

Colm is relatively new to television. He started doing location sound with Crossing the Line Films and has spent the last 18 months working with Ross Bartley on Wild Journeys.

Working for Crossing The Line has taken Colm from the Peruvian Andes to the Sonoran desert via the Skelligs and the wildest corners of Ireland. Colm also recorded location sound for Charlie Bird's Amazon Journey and Charlie Bird's American Year.

Pádraig is sightings co-ordinator of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group and has travelled extensively overseas following his passion for cetaceans.  When not monitoring and photographing large whale's off the Irish south coast, Pádraig is promoting Ireland’s wealth of cetacean diversity and has written and published extensively on the subject. Pádraig co-ordinates the Irish fin and humpback whale photo-Id catalogues.

David Cabot ringed his first bird when aged 14 as he trained to be a bird ringer at Skockholm Bird Observatory, West Wales. Later he studied Zoology at Oxford and Trinity College Dublin, worked for the BBC in the Natural History Unit Bristol and later obtained his doctorate in Zoology while lecturing at University College Dublin. While a student at TCD he commenced in 1961 three long-term population and migration studies on the Barnacle goose in West Mayo and on the Cormorant and Fulmar petrel in Co. Wexford. These studies are still in progress. In the late 1980s he organised and led two expeditions to north-east Greenland to study the breeding biology of barnacle geese and ringed large numbers of geese to monitor their movements and migrations. Recently, in collaboration with the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust he has been satellite tracking Barnacle geese with small transmitters attached to the backs of geese. He worked for 21 years in An Foras Forbartha as head of conservation and Amenity Research. He was Special Advisor on Environmental Affairs to the Taoiseach 1990-1992 and then spent 10 years working in Eastern Europe assisting Ministries of Environment to comply with EU environmental requirements. He has published several books, the latest being WILDFOWL (HarperCollins, May 2009), and has produced 12 documentary films for RTÉ and the BBC, several of which have won international awards and have been shown in many countries. He now lives in West Mayo on the edge of the Atlantic where he has dedicated his farmland to nature conservation. He is now working on several new books and other projects.

Specialising initially in the evolution of animal signals, especially warning signals, in his early research work, Tim has since moved onto unraveling the mechanisms by which animals map the environments through which they travel. What cues do birds use to navigate home across familiar areas? What do their maps look like? How versatile is the spatial knowledge they store? With questions ranging from cognitive to ecological, homing pigeons are the principal model, and the techniques involve field experiments using miniature GPS loggers, on-board cameras, and analytical approaches borrowed from computational engineering.

Tim lectures in animal behavior in the University of Oxford's Zoology Department. His most recent research has been in trying to understand how long distance wandering seabirds (many of which are of vulnerable conservation status) migrate, map and navigate across the open oceans. He also works to promote a public understanding of biological science through TV and radio.

Kerry Leonard is an independent researcher and consultant from Northern Ireland.
He has helped study bird migration in Ireland for over twenty years by volunteering at
Copeland Bird Observatory, Northern Ireland's only such observatory.   He is a British Trust for Ornithology A ringer and trainer and through his ringing and observations contributes to our knowledge of the movements of Irish birds.

Kerry has also worked on Manx Shearwaters for 20 years.  He has carried out a number of surveys of Manx Shearwater colonies and is currently carrying out research into survey techniques for the species.   Having been brought up on the coast he has a lifelong interest in migratory seabirds and Procellarids (Petrels and Shearwaters) in particular.  Recently he has been working with Oxford University to track the movements of Manx Shearwaters, including their spectacular annual trans-equatorial migration from Ireland to South America.

Greg Forde is a graduate of University College Dublin where he obtained an Honours degree in Zoology. Later he went on to complete a Ph.D. on the ecology of Lough Ennell and Owel.
He was a member of the first Irish Brent Goose Expedition in 1984 which travelled to the Canadian Northwestern Territories to find the breeding grounds of the Irish Brent Geese.
He went on the become fisheries Manager of Gowla and Invermore fisheries in Connemara and later the Manager of the Lough Inagh Fishery in Recess, Connemara.

After a spell in private industry in Connemara he joined the Western Regional Fisheries Board as Assistant CEO in 1994. He served in this role for 10 years managing the fisheries of the Western Region from Westport in County Mayo to Hags Head in County Clare. In 2004 he took over as Chief Executive Officer and is based in Galway City. Greg enjoys trout fishing on Lough Corrib and is committed to nature protection and conservation throughout the Island of Ireland and in particular the eradication of Alien Species.
Greg and his wide Deirdre have a guesthouse on Lough Corrib in Oughterard, Co. Galway.

Ross Bartley is a leading cameraman and director who, after 9 years working with Crossing the Line Films has experience in all aspects of television production. He has filmed extensively throughout the world, often in the more inhospitable places such as the Arctic or Sahara. He has worked on numerous award winning documentaries including The Ghost of Roger Casement,Tom Crean, Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero, Last Chance Journeys: Siberia, The Legend of Liam Clancy and The Catalpa Rescue. After filming and directing four series of RTE’s Wild Trials, Ross went freelance in 2007 and has since worked on various projects from the Charlie Bird explores the Amazon & Ganges series to Blood of the Irish. He has just finished filming and directing Wild Journeys a three part series on Irish animal migrations for RTÉ.

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Cepa joined Crossing the Line Films in 2005 as Researcher on their highly successful series Wild Trials and she is now researching and developing new ideas for future projects with special emphasis on wildlife and environmental subjects. She recently spent almost a year in India working on the company's tiger conservation film Broken Tail while also Producing Wild Journeys a major 3 hour wildlife series on animal migration. Cepa's interests have always been in nature, wildlife and conservation and after graduating from NUI Galway with an honours degree in Environmental Science, she worked on Wild Ireland, Ireland's first wildlife and environmental magazine. She has also worked in Glenveagh National Park with the Irish National Parks & Wildlife Service and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

Dr. Simon Berrow is Co-ordinator of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, an All-Ireland group which co-ordinates a cetacean stranding and sighting scheme and carries out research and education on whales, dolphins and porpoise in Ireland.  He is also Project Manager of the Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation, which aims to develop and provide educational awareness and conservation of the Shannon dolphins and other wildlife in the region. The Foundation runs an education and research centre in Kilrush, Co Clare.

Simon completed his PhD at Lough Hyne Marine Reserve in west Cork in 1991 and has been working on marine megafauna in Ireland since 1989.  He has carried out a wide range of research projects including photo-id studies of bottlenose dolphins. He carried out a basking shark survey including attempts to tag sharks in 1993. In 2003 and 2006 he organised an expedition to Cape Verde to study the migration patterns of humpback whales which he thinks move from Cape Verde to Ireland. He has also spent 2.5 years on South Georgia in the Antarctic with the British Antarctic Survey where he worked on albatrosses, petrels, penguins and seals including determining their foraging trips using satellite telemetry.

Emmett is a graduate in Countryside Management from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He also holds a post-graduate Diploma and a research MSc. in Coastal Zone Management, University of Ulster. He has a practical background in conservation management having worked previously in both the Wicklow Mts. National Park and Glenveagh National Park, Co. Donegal.
Before taking up his current post as National Parks and Wildlife Service Conservation Ranger for Inishowen Emmett gained extensive experience monitoring migratory bird species in his post as a Ranger in the Caringorm Mountains, Scotland. Since returning to Ireland he successfully set up and edits the wildlife website www.nature.ie.

Emmett’s interest in basking sharks started in 2006 with the recording of basking shark behavioural habits around Malin head and Inishtrahull Island. His current research is centred on developing a robust survey methodology for undertaking basking shark census. In 2009 he co-founded the Irish Basking Shark Project to further the study of basking sharks and raise their public profile.

Alyn made his first application to be a ringer at the age of 8 in 1963 but was politely refused on the basis that one had to be 16 years of age. He joined the Birds Unit of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (formally the Dept. of Lands) in 1975.  He finally attended his first ringing course in Dundrum, Co. Down in 1976. One of his first assignments was the ringing of thousands of seabirds on the Great Saltee and other islands off the west coast as part of a long term seabird survival project.

In the 1980s he completed his diploma in Field Ecology with London University and later became the first registered cannon-netter in Ireland, a post that is very much active today. During this period, Alyn started working on the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve as a Conservation Ranger and played an integral part in the Greenland White-fronted Goose project which has been responsible for the successful introduction of a shooting moratorium, not only in Ireland but also in Iceland and more recently in Greenland.
Alyn has co-lead up to ten successful goose ringing expeditions to Western Greenland and Iceland and also more recently was involved in breeding Barnacle and Pink-footed Goose studies to Jameson Land, East Greenland with the Danish Wildlife Service.

More recent expeditions have taken him to Eureka in the Canadian High Arctic for a Brent Goose ringing Expedition in conjunction with the Irish Brent Goose Research Group and the Canadian Wildlife Service. Alyn has been co-author to at least 30 scientific papers on goose biology and is currently a District Conservation officer with the Birds Unit. He is responsible for annual aerial surveys for waterfowl and all issues relating to ringing licensing in Ireland. Alyn is secretary of the National Parks and Wildlife Service Ringing Group, and holds a permanent position on the British trust for Ornithology ringing committee.

Alyn continues to live on the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve which is the winter home to over 8000 Greenland White-fronted and over 3000 Brent Geese.    

As a young boy in Arklow Tom raced pigeons with his father. Since then he has had a strong interest in animal behaviour, particularly in homing, navigation and migration.
During his PhD an opportunity arose to investigate the migratory behaviour of the world’s largest sea turtle – the leatherback. As part of an international team of scientists Tom began to investigate the pan-Atlantic movements of this fascinating animal. Many years later (and only with the considerable help from the local salmon fishermen and aquarium), they finally succeeded in satellite tagging two leatherbacks off the west coast of Ireland. These were the first two leatherbacks satellite tagged in European waters. Data from the satellite tags allowed them to follow the movements of these two animals across the Atlantic for a year, providing important insights on their migratory and foraging behaviour, and diving capabilities.

Since then Tom began investigating the migratory behaviour of the oceanic sunfish, the largest bony fish in the world. Like the leatherback, it feeds on jellyfish and only occurs in our coastal waters each summer. More recently his interest in animal behaviour has broadened to jellyfish. Often perceived as bags of water, incapable of any complex behaviour, it is now known that jellyfish can display remarkable abilities to maintain their positions in particular favoured bays or estuaries. Tom is now applying many of the same technologies we to tag sea turtles and sunfish to investigate the secret lives of jellyfish.

Eric Dempsey is a professional bird guide, broadcaster, presenter, speaker and writer. He is the author of the best-selling ‘Complete Guide to Ireland’s Birds’ published by Gill & MacMillan in 1993 with a revised 2nd edition produced in 2002. He is also the author of ‘The Pocket Guide to the Common Birds of Ireland’ (1995), ‘Finding Birds in Ireland – the complete guide’ (2007) and ‘Birdwatching in Ireland with Eric Dempsey’ (2008). He is currently working on a new ‘Field Guide to Ireland’s Bird’ due for publication in autumn 2010.

Eric is a team member of the popular ‘Mooney show on RTE Radio 1 and has compiled and presented radio documentaries for RTE’s ‘Documentary on One’ series. He has also been involved in the night-long Dawn Chorus radio shows and the associated posters and CD’s produced by the RTE Guide on the ‘Dawn Chorus’  and ‘Wonderful Waders’. Eric has made numerous TV appearances, including a documentary on his birdwatching life as part of RTE’s ‘Obsessions’ series. Other TV work include expert contributions to Wild Trials, several appearances on Nationwide and the live TV broadcast from the North Bull Island with the Mooney Goes Wild team.

He has published work on Ireland’s birds in North America, Australia and Europe, was a features writer for Wild Ireland magazine and contributed to the Irish Times supplements on migration and urban wildlife.  Eric is also a Failte Ireland-accredited bird guide and is the Director of the Birds of Ireland News Service (BINS). He was the editor of Ireland’s first independent birdwatching magazine, Irish Birding News, and is a former editor of the annual Irish Bird Report. He is a monthly contributor to British Birds, one of the oldest publications in Europe.

Born and raised in north Dublin where he still lives, Eric is a committed and dedicated conservationist.  He is now a much sought-after speaker and hosts workshops and presentations throughout the country. He lectures in the People’s College where he runs a two year course on Irelands birds. Eric is also a listed Heritage Specialist with the Heritage Council. His website is www.birdsireland.com.