2008 Belize Expedition Leaders: Mike Oster and Britt BaselPhotography
Britt Basel. University of Colorado, B.A. A freelance and fine art photographer, Britt has traveled and photographed extensively around the world. As a teenager she went to Ecuador on a youth photography scholarship. She studied photography and art history at the Aegean Center for Fine Arts in Greece, and went on to study with the School for International Training in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Britt graduated with honors in Anthropology from the University of Colorado, where she focused on indigenous culture and Mesoamerican archaeology. She worked as a scuba instructor and translator in Costa Rica, conducted fieldwork with and photographed the Guaraní people of Paraguay, and led Putney Student Travel’s Global Awareness in Action program in El Salvador. Britt is currently working as the translator and still photographer for an upcoming documentary in El Salvador. She is the Director of International Programming for the Body Form Photo Workshop, and tends to split her time between the mountains of Colorado and the waters of the Caribbean. Britt is an avid snowboarder and sailor; she is a PADI-certified scuba instructor, an Emergency First Response Instructor, and a Wilderness First Responder. Some of her work is available for viewing on-line at www.brittbaselphoto.com. Britt is fluent in Spanish.
Wildlife & Conservation
Mike Oster: Elon University, B.S. Mike majored in Biology and minored in Philosophy at Elon, where he served as a teacher’s assistant and Vice President of the floor council. After graduation he spent two seasons aboard the eighty foot Schooner SoundWaters, where he worked as a senior deckhand and taught sail handling and Long Island Sound ecology, and five seasons as a marine science instructor at the Catalina Island Marine Institute in California. Mike led Putney Student Travel’s Dominica community service program and has traveled through Great Britain, the Galápagos Islands, Australia, Fiji, Mexico, and the British Virgin Islands. He currently works as a team leader, naturalist, and deckhand aboard a sixty-five foot catamaran for the Pacific Whale Foundation in Maui, where he leads snorkeling and whale watching expeditions dedicated to conservation, education and research of the world’s oceans, with a particular focus on humpback whales and coral reef ecology. Mike loves being out on the ocean, working on boats, spear-fishing, scuba diving, and playing guitar.
