Chelsea Mayer

Chelsea is a naturalist, photographer, and videographer whose love of animals is the through line in her life. She grew up on the southern California coast in Huntington Beach, and throughout her teenage years she volunteered at an animal shelter and a wildlife rehabilitation center. In 2011 she graduated from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television with a Bachelor of Arts in Film Production.

After a few years of working on films, Chelsea turned her sights seaward, leaving Los Angeles in favor of a career on the open ocean. Nearly every day for three years, Chelsea had the privilege of observing the marine mammals of southern California, working as a naturalist, photographer and deckhand aboard various whale watching boats in Orange County. More recently, Chelsea moved to San Diego, and trained to be a scuba diving professional. She works as a divemaster on a liveaboard vessel that does scuba diving trips to the Channel Islands, and great white shark cage diving at Guadalupe Island. She loves working on boats because she gets to meet interesting people from all over the world and share her enthusiasm for nature and conservation. Chelsea is a US Coast Guard-licensed 100-ton Captain, PADI Divemaster, American Cetacean Society Naturalist, and Girls Who Click Ambassador.