Captain Joel S. Fogel, 60, was born and raised along the New Jersey shore near Atlantic City, NJ. He developed an interest in the sea as a young man working aboard his grandfather's commercial fishing vessel, the Blue Fish, from the age of 10 through his teens. ˇˇ.New.!! Margate´s Joel Fogel, Jim Somers earn gold at national championships He attended the Univeristy of Hawaii on Oahu in 1963, where he studied Marine Zoology and worked as an assistant curator for the Oceanic Institute/Sea Life Park. Since the 1970's, Captain Fogel who is a 100 ton US Coast Guard licensed captain, officer in the Merchant Marine, a licensed pilot and a basic flight instructor, has led nearly two dozen major expeditions around the world, working with Smithsonian Institute, National Geographic and the Explorers Club. Captain Fogel has been a member of the Explorers Club since 1972, when Mr. Lowell Thomas nominated him following his 1970 paddle by kayak from New York to Miami along the Intra-coastal Waterways to film and document water pollution. For several years, he traveled throughout the US college circuit lecturing on OUR POLLUTED WATERWAYS, wrote FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS: The Destruction of the Eastern Seaboard and testified before the US Congress to lobby for legislation for the 1972 Clean Water Act. As President of the Atlantic County Citizens Council for the Environment, he joined in a class action lawsuit with the New Jersey Shell-fisherman's Association against the City of Atlantic City for polluting the back bay waters in 1972. His organization won the suit and helped to establish the EPA award winning regional sewerage facility, the Atlantic County Utilities Authority, which has significantly cleaned the waters of our coastline in the region. He has received three Presidential commendations for his environmental work. In 1986, following the rescue of a young woman from a car which ran off a bridge into 40 feet of ice water in the back bays of New Jersey, he was nominated for the Carnegie Hero Award.