2025 Contest

The Professional's Choice Judge for the 2025 Desert Dolphins Scuba Diving Club Annual Photo Contest

Andrew J. Martinez 

We are fortunate to have a skilled professional underwater photographer joining us to select the winner of this year's Professional’s Choice Award in our photo contest. Andrew J. Martinez has been photographing North Atlantic marine life for over forty years. His work expresses strong appreciation for nature and the beauty of the underwater world.

Andy has an extensive background in photojournalism. If you read nature, travel and dive magazines in the United States, you’ve probably seen his work. In addition to having his work featured in magazine types of publications, he authored a field guide entitled Marine Life of the North Atlantic. Four editions of this field guide have been published. Rather than printing a fifth edition of the book, he converted it into a mobile app named Marine Life North Atlantic. The app is available in the Apple Store and Google Play.

A new edition of La Faune Sous-Marine du Saint-Laurent, a field guide to marine life in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Quebec, Canada, was published through a collaboration between Pierre Henry Fountaine and Andy. Recent collaboration between Andy, Paul Erickson and Tilbury House Publishers resulted in the creation of two books for young readers, Pier at the end of the World and Don’t Mess with Me: The strange lives of Venomous Creatures.

Many other nature books and field guides contain his work, and his images are featured in exhibits in many aquaria in the United States. In addition to working in the North Atlantic, Andy has traveled to Fiji, Bonaire and Cape Cod on photo assignments sponsored by National Geographic World Magazine.  He has guided travel and marine biology study groups to the islands of Galapagos, Cayman, St. Vincent, and the Bay Islands of Honduras, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Andy’s images have appeared in several Audubon Field Guides as well as on their covers. Publishers featuring his work in books include Grolier, McDougal Littell, Holt Rinehart and Winston, Pearson Education, Franklin Watts, Prentice Hall, Glencoe, World Book, Houghton Mifflin, Jones and Bartlet, Pearson Scott Foresman, National Geographic, New England Aquarium, Simon and Schuster.

Numerous magazines have featured Andy’s work. These include: Fathoms Magazine, Natural History, Smithsonian, Life, National Geographic World, Ranger Rick, Scholastic Inc, Newsweek, Business Week, Caribbean Travel and Life, Geo France, Geo Germany, Editora Abril (Brazil), Struik Publishing (South Africa), Microsoft, Boston Globe, New York Times, Zoo Life, Scuba Diving, Canadian Wildlife, and many more throughout Europe.

Thank you, Andy!