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CAPT. JOEL S. FOGEL OF SOMERS POINT, N.J., VOTED CHAIRMAN FOR THE PHILADELPHIA CHAPTER OF THE EXPLORERS CLUB PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, (January 1, 2011)

The Explorer's Club President, Lorie Karnath with Captain Joel S. Fogel, Philadelphia EC Chapter Chairman.

The Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Explorers Club named Capt. Joel S. Fogel, 66, of Somers Point, N.J. as its Chairman.

World renown wildlife artist and sculptor, A.J. (Buddy) Obara has been named as Vice Chairman.

A member of The Explorers Club since 1972, Fogel was recognized by the Chapter for a lifetime of exploration, including significant work in evaluating water quality and promoting clean water, as well as his tireless support of the Chapter as "Explorer of the Year" in 2004.

It's a great honor to be recognized by colleagues and associates who know what the passion of exploration is about," said Fogel. "Whether undersea, in outer space, down the river, up the mountain or into innerspace pursuits like medicine, genetics and psychiatry, our members have excelled in all of these fields and more. Knowing them has enriched my life."

He continued, "In an age when people are taught to value security and avoid risk at all costs, The Explorers Club teaches you to be a poet of action to take calculated risks for the benefit of science and to gather knowledge that will enhance various fields of study. It is important to have an organization that places a value on these endeavors and supports them."

Fogel has been head of the Environmental Affairs for the Philadelphia Chapter of The Explorers Club for the past 10 years. He also is President of the Waterwatch International and sits on the advisory council of the Atlantic County Utilities Authority's Groundwater Advisory Committee. This year, Captain Fogel was nominated by ACUA for the CNN Hero of the Year Award for his clean water projects around the globe. The South Jersey native was also nominated this year for The Lowell Thomas Award for humanitarian work in Ethiopia during an anthropological expedition in 1973. His other awards include two Presidential Commendations for environmental work and a Carnegie Hero Award nomination for the rescue of a young woman in 1986 when her car went into the bay on Christmas Eve.

Born in Atlantic City, NJ, Fogel studied marine zoology at the University of Hawaii on Oahu, where he became involved with Jacques Cousteau's CONSHELF: Man in the Sea project. He also single-handedly sailed a 30-foot Danish folkboat from Hawaii throughout the South Pacific, detailing his journeys in the book South Sea Odyssey. In 1969, during a 10,000-mile motorcycle trip from Alaska to South America which was documented in his Cycle Guide Article, "Journey Through Latin America", he met his wife, Coty.

In 1970, Fogel founded WaterWatch International, a non-profit volunteer water monitoring organization, of which he is president and executive director. He was nominated to The Explorers Club by Lowell Thomas in 1972 after kayaking from New York to Miami to film and document water pollution.

Since the 1970s, he has led nearly two dozen major expeditions around the world, working with the Smithsonian Institute, National Geographic and The Explorers Club. He carried The Explorers Club flag on a 1973 expedition to Ethiopia¹s Omo River to film tribal groups for the documentary A Voyage to the Stone Age; on a 1986 archaeological survey along the Maroni River in the Amazon Basin; and on the 1987 Yangtze River Geological Expedition in China, which was documented in the book Riding the Dragon¹s Back.

Captain Fogel is also the recipient of five national American Ironman titles from various competitions with the USLA (United States Lifesaving Association) throughout the United States in the Super Vet Division. (Visit www.usla.org for more information).

He has led expeditions to monitor water quality on Russia¹s Volga River, on the Mississippi and along the U.S. east and west coast..

Fogel is a 100-ton U.S. Coast Guard licensed captain, an officer in the Merchant Marines, a licensed pilot and a certified basic flight instructor. He lives in Somers Point with Coty, his wife of 35 years. They have a son, four daughters and eight grandchildren.

Previous Chapter Chairman of the Philadelphia Chapter include Douglas Soroka, Bensalem, PA; John Garderner, Philadelphia, PA; Peter Hess, Esq., Wilmington, Del.; and Steven Nagewicz, Belmar, NJ. For more information, visit the Chapter"s website at www.explorers.org/philadelphia/html.

Founded in 1904 by a group of the world¹s leading explorers, The Explorers Club is a multidisciplinary professional society dedicated to the advancement of field research, scientific exploration and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore.

To receive notification of upcoming lectures and events sponsored by The Philadelphia Chapter of the Explorers Club, e-mail requests to fidco@hotmail.com and include "Explorers Club" in the message header.

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‘Poet of the action’ strives to save the sea Click to see Original Article

Attention cubicle captives: how are you spending your Precious, finite time on Planet Earth? Consider the 60-year run of Joel Fogel of Somers Point N.J.: He is a licensed 100-ton boat captain, a pilot, an actor (10 movies, including Rocky V, Dead Poets Society, Passenger 57, and Crimes and Misdemeanors), a model, a filmmaker (10 documentaries), an author (five books) a musician (piano, ukulele, guitar, harmonica, concertina, drums), singer, sailor, kayaker, surfer, windsurfer, scuba diver, horseback rider, fisherman, marathoner, scientist, an environmental educator, an explorer. He onced "swooped" in a hand glider "into" a volcano.

He met his wife, Coty, in Mexico while motorcicling from Alaska to South Amercia. He has kayaked the East Coast from New York to Florida and the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego.

When he wasn`t helping run his family`s multinational commercial refrigeration business, he paddled the Mississipi, the Nile, the Volga and the Amazon.

He wrecked his back when he plunged down a 60-foot chute while battling the ferocious whitewater of the Yangtze.

Solo, he toured the South Seas in a 30-foot Danish folkboat. He salied from Puerto Rico to the French West Indies in a 14-foot Hobie Cat. For eigth months, he survived in a cave and treehouse on a deserted island. During a trip down Ethiopia`s Omo River, he caught malaria and lived for six months with a Stone Age tribe.
Fogel`s term for himself: “Poet of Action.”

Much of that action revolves around water. “Water”, he says, “is the key to my life”.

His coastal kayak journeys of the early 1790s were one man`s valiant attempt to save the sea, to measure the water quality of the ocean and the rivers that flowed into it.

The ocean then was horribly polluted, “a sewer for millions of gallons of human and industrial waste,” Fogel says.

His passion for clean water prompted him to found Water Watch International, a volunteer water-monitoring organization, and fight for uniform water-quality tersting standards.

More recently, he has campaigned for water recycling, Instead of pumping wastewater into te ocean, he says, we should be “scrubbing” int with the aid of algae and using it to irrigate crops.

Eventually it will seep down and recharge the aquifer. In reconition of these efforts, and Fogel`s expeditionary zeal, the Philadelphia chapter of the Explorers Club last month named him its Explorer of the year .

His grandfather would be proud. While his mother was making Fogel practice the piano in their Margate mansion, his grandfather, a commercial fisherman, was teaching him how to catch bluefish and imbuing him with a love of the sea.

At the University of hawaii, where he majored in marine zoology, Fogel joined a NASA training project that led to his meeting jacques Cousteau.
“Remember, the ocean, she`s your mother,” Cousteau told him. “All the life comes from the sea. You must protect her with your life.”
That Fogel has done.

CAPTAIN JOEL STEVEN FOGEL

A Life Well Lived In 1987, I was first to explore the Upper Yangtze River in China by kayak through the Great Bend Gorge. We were 17 men and one woman, composed of topographers, geologists and professional river-runners. The story was told in Riding the Dragon’s Back: Down the Yangtze River.

My desire to explore first hit me in two places, at school and at work. I was about 10, listening to the teacher drone on, pointing to a map. Outside, a typical nor’easter blew off the sea in Atlantic City, NJ. Casinos hadn’t arrived yet. It was 1954.

“Pay attention, Mr. Fogel,” the authoritative figure yelped, slapping his pointer against the blackboard. “If you ever want to learn anything, you must stop daydreaming!”

The rain pounded against the window, but I was off, mentally traveling down some dark jungle river which the map showed only as a green curving line. That day taught me that we must first dream in order to live our dreams. My teacher was wrong. The dream would someday lead me to a reality which I could never have imagined.

Two years later, I was sitting in my father’s office. He manufactured commercial refrigerators in Philadelphia. On the weekend, I would travel to the factory to be “exposed to the family business.” On top of his large wooden desk sat a catalogue of dealers and salesmen. The bright fluorescent lighting glared down on black-and-white photographs of face after autonomous face staring back at me. They were all smiling and suddenly I was lost in a maze of men in grey flannel suits. Something clicked...I was determined at that moment that I only wanted one thing: to live an interesting life.

Later, after many adventures and expeditions, I would articulate my feelings in a documentary done about me called Challenging China’s Yangtze: “If you’re lucky, you are only going to live 100 years. There is a lot to see. I already know what my place and people are like. Now I want to know what the rest of the world is like.”

The sea was my first turning point. My grandfather, a commercial fisherman, took me in his vessel, The Bluefish, for days on end. I was only 5 or 6. I used to get really sick, and complain that I wanted to go home. “The sea is your home,” grizzled old Captain Joe Broome would chuckle. “She’s your Home and your Mother...so learn to love Her and stop squallin’.”

In school, sitting at my cramped wooden desk, I would dream. At work in my father’s factory, sweeping the floor, I would dream more.

Later, when I was about 16, I became a lifeguard on the Margate City Beach Patrol. That was great...saving people from the sea and being admired by pretty girls. That job nearly spoiled me for life.

At the University of Hawaii, where I studied Marine Zoology and worked as an assistant curator at the Sea Life Park on Oahu, I met Mr. Jacques Cousteau while working on the Conshelf Project. I was assigned to him as a “runner”—running for gas, food and coffee for him and his Navy divers. Captain Cousteau taught me a lot. He gave me a deep respect for Mother Ocean and all that She does for us. “Remember,” he said, “the Ocean has given us everything! We are from Her.”

In 1970, with his encouragement, I paddled a kayak from New York to Florida to film and report on water pollution. This was the beginning of WATERWATCH International, a non-profit worldwide water monitoring group which I founded to educate the public about the need for clean water. And it led to Lowell Thomas sponsoring me into The Explorers Club.

Exploration is the poetry of life and explorers are the poets of action. * * * CAPTAIN JOEL FOGEL, a 100-ton Coast Guard captain, was born in 1944 and has led nearly two dozen major expeditions, everything from living with an Ethiopian stone age tribe, to exploring underwater caves in Puerto Rico to documenting, in Twilight of the Primitive, an Amazon tribe, to studying Volga mussels. He worked for the Fogel/Jordan Commercial Refrigerator Co. for nearly 40 years as VP of International Marketing, but eschewed gray flannel. A holder of the Audubon Society’s Golden Osprey Award for environmental awareness, he’s kayaked the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi, and the lengths of both US coasts reporting on water quality. He’s appeared in 10 movies, including Rocky V and Dead Poet’s Society. After saving a woman whose car went off a bridge into ice water he was awarded a commendation from President Reagan and was nominated for the Carnegie Hero Award.

Joel and Coty have Sandy, William, Ellen, Anna and Jolina, and six grandchildren. They split their year between homes in Somers Point, New Jersey, and Manzanillo, Mexico.