by sea, by land
Former Royal Marines Jon Slayer & Luke Hosty form a dynamic expeditionary team bringing multiple skillsets to their operation. With a focus on documenting Marine Protected Areas, and with years of ocean advocacy work behind them, both Luke & Jon are versatile watermen, specialist divers and instructors in scuba & freediving - confident in any ocean environment.
Combining their talents to cover aerial, terrestrial and underwater film, photography & VR capture, they draw on their military training and experience to apply a lean approach to expeditions enabling them to be agile & self-sufficient.
Protect Blue provides an end to end solution for ocean focused projects - from expedition planning & logistics, to capturing and documenting across multi-media formats, building digital archives and then bringing all that incredible footage back to an in-house media production unit to create short & long form content & purpose driven stories.
Jon Slayer
Jon was born and raised in Durban, South Africa - surf mecca and shark hotspot. His education was not in a classroom. As a young man he was a safety kayaker on the Zambezi River and worked for whitewater rafting companies in Victoria Falls.
After 911, Jon had an illustrious military career with the Royal Marines, including deployments into Afghanistan and as a training officer at the Commando Training Centre. As a civilian he has supported science and research trips onto coral reefs around the British Indian Ocean Territory.
In 2010, he founded Blue Ventures Belize marine conservation organisation operating in Sarteneja and Bacalar Chico. Since then he has filmed documentaries of marine conservation stories around the world, protected ships from Somalian pirates in the Indian Ocean, captured Street View images of uninhabited remote tropical atolls for Google, lead and participated in numerous coral atoll research expeditions and started a business selling underwater housings that he invented for virtual reality cameras.
In 2017 he was recruited to Force Blue, a charity that repurposes the military and diver skills of special forces veterans for marine conservation so that they can assist with coral reef restoration and research. He currently resides in the UK where he continues his work as an expedition leader and conservationist.
Luke Hosty
Luke (Googsi) is the Co-Founder & Creative Director of Protect Blue. His schooling in filmmaking, photography and art combined with a love for the ocean shaped a lifelong commitment to protecting it.
After ten years service in the Royal Marines, he found sanctuary underwater and he’s been finding his way back to the sea ever since.
Blending the skills learned from his childhood in the Southern African bush, military operations, teaching freediving & breathwork and his work as an outdoor adventure instructor, Luke has an intimate relationship with nature, and an in-depth understanding of how best to thrive in any environment - from micro-adventure to expedition.
His affinity for storytelling and training in social & environmental impact have given him a unique approach to seeking out the most meaningful stories and understanding how best to share them with the world.