Go Diving Show 2025 Main Stage Speaker: Steve Backshall
Multi-award-winning TV presenter Steve Backshall – headline speaker at the GO Diving Show in March – will be turning his attentions to two diver-favourites, whales and sharks.
An all-action hero, Steve has explored some of the most-remote places on the planet. This, coupled with his unparalleled knowledge of wildlife and the natural world, make him a fascinating guest speaker.
As one of the busiest presenters on television, perhaps best-known for his phenomenally successful Deadly series, Steve will be appearing on the Main Stage in Sydney alongside the likes of diving luminaries Dawn Kernagis, Monty Halls. Andy Torbet, Rannva Joermundsson and Maria Bollerup.
Steve recently travelled across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans filming Whale for Sky TV, a ground-breaking programme tracking our most-iconic, yet-threatened, species. He has also filmed Expedition and Shark for Sky TV and appeared in Our Changing Planet for the UK’s BBC One – an ambitious seven-year series documenting six of the planet’s most threatened ecosystems.
Prior to this, for Lost Land of the Jaguar, he made the first ascent of Mount Upuigma in Venezuela, slept on the vertical cliff face, and found unknown species of animals on the summit. He also abseiled to the bottom of the Kaiteur Falls in Guyana to the soaked wonderland below.
In Lost Land of the Volcano, Steve was the first outsider to enter the Volcano Mount Bosavi – where the team discovered as many as 40 new species, including the largest rat in the world! Steve also took part in a brutal caving expedition opening-up a new passage in Mageni Cave in New Britain.
Other series include Expedition Alaska, where he was almost swallowed by humpback whales and was swept into the guts of a glacier, and The Venom Hunter, where he endured the stings of hundreds of bullet ants (the world’s most-painful stinging invertebrate) in an initiation ceremony.
Other films he has made include Wilderness St Kilda, Extreme Britain – Caves, Springwatch Trackers, Alaska Live, Blue Planet Live and Undiscovered Worlds with Steve Backshall.
A prolific writer, Steve’s most-recent book, Deep Blue, is a blend of memoir, travel, and marine and environmental science that takes us on a tour of the many worlds of aquatic life: from underwater deserts and rainforests to the evolution of ocean heroes like the sea turtle and the great white shark, to the rapidly declining state of white polar seas and coral reefs. Steve will be signing copies of Deep Blue immediately after his talks both days.
As if that wasn’t enough, in 2023, Steve showed immense resilience, determination, drive, and ambition to break a new world record – for the fastest time to paddle the length of the Thames River in the UK.
Steve’s talks on the Main Stage will be:
Learning to speak ‘whale’
We’re entering a golden era of understanding the world of the whale, and a near future when we can not only understand whales, but even talk back…
Sharks – older than trees
Nose-to-nose encounters with everything from tiny tasselled wobbegongs to great whites, tigers, bulls and great hammerheads.
Go Diving Show 2025 takes place at the NAEC Stoneleigh Park, Coventry, on the 1st -2nd March.
