Jim Abernethy’s love for our oceans wildlife, started at a very early age, growing up just 2 homes away from the beach on Singer Island, Florida. His first loves were actually sea turtles and whales after experiencing both, in what would be life changing experiences!  These animal encounters led him down a path of being able to follow all his dreams of spending his entire life with our oceans beautiful creatures as well as fighting for their protection. At the age of 12, he achieved his open water scuba certification. After completing college with a business management degree, Jim immediately obtained both a scuba instructors license as well as a Captains license and launched into the ecotourism scuba diving business! After college, Jim spent an enormous amount of time in the water with all types of large predatory sharks, many of which can no longer can be seen in the huge numbers of years past, which was the start of his legendary conservation efforts through his nonprofit “Wildlife VOICE”  www.wildlifevoice.org

Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures (JASA), based in South Florida, pioneered and set the bar for shark diving with large predatory sharks cageless encounters. For over 40 years Jim has been the premier outfitter for up close and personal encounters, in addition to world-class photography opportunities, with tiger, great hammerhead, oceanic white tip, bull, lemon, nurse and whale sharks. He is best known as a passionate crusader for shark protection. For decades Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures, Inc. has conducted top rate charters and expeditions in south Florida, Mexico and the Bahamas. In 1997, JASA added a 12-passenger liveaboard vessel (M/V Shear Water) to his existing 5 day scuba charter boats and has since, been the leader in photography/video shark ecotourism expeditions with a mission of changing the misconception of sharks to their true nature and turning his clients into shark conservationists!.