Tell us about yourself

I am 35 years old and originally from Belarus, a landlocked country. My day job is running our mobile app, Seabook, which I co-founded with my husband. He handles the development and technical side, while I am in charge of all the content – both inside the app and across our social media platforms.

How did the ocean become a passion for you?

Growing up in Belarus, the ocean felt like a different planet. To me, bodies of water were just places to swim or sunbathe. I only saw the sea during childhood health programmes in Ukraine on the Black Sea (after the Chernobyl disaster, children from my region were sent there to recover).

I remember collecting pretty seashells, but I honestly had no idea they were actually homes for living creatures! I never even thought about putting my head underwater.

Everything changed when I was 24. My husband and I went on vacation to Cyprus, saw a dive centre and decided to try a discovery dive just out of curiosity. The marine life there was quite scarce, but we saw a lionfish and it blew my mind. We realised there was a whole hidden world down there. We wanted to feel confident in this new environment, so we decided to get certified. Since Belarus only has lakes, and they are cold and murky, we went to Thailand, where we trained all the way up to rescue diver level.

When did you begin posting to social media and why does this medium work for you? Which posts have resonated most with your followers?

I started my Instagram simply to share whatever we filmed on our dives. In the beginning I loved everything equally: every fish and every reef felt like a discovery worth posting. I’d also repost footage from other underwater photographers, with notes about what the creature was, partly to learn for myself and partly to show others.

That reposting is actually what changed everything. Through other people’s footage I discovered the incredible animals living around the Philippines – and that’s what made us go there. After diving the Indo-Pacific, our whole perspective shifted: we stopped looking for big fish and fell for the ‘macro’ world of nudibranchs, cephalopods and tiny critters. 

One night, we saw a creature we couldn’t identify using the books on our boat (later we found out it wasn’t even a nudibranch, but a mushroom coral with its tentacles out). That’s when the idea for Seabook was born. We just wanted a tool to identify what we were seeing by its features. Since then, it has grown into something much bigger. Divers can log their dives and sync them straight from a dive computer. But it isn’t only for divers: snorkelers, tide poolers, anyone who spots something in the water can log the sighting and identify it through the database or with AI.

Social media works for me because it’s so visual, and because it genuinely connects people. It’s how I found my own way to these creatures. Interestingly, my most popular videos are about nudibranchs. People absolutely love them because they look like real-life Pokemon. The comment section is always full of people saying ‘I had absolutely no idea creatures like this existed!’

What do you get out of social media in this way?

For us, social media is a powerful way to build a community and promote our app organically, which is crucial for a small family project. It’s also a way to stay connected to the ocean. Due to life changes, we had to relocate from Belarus to Poland, and we haven’t been able to dive for almost three years now. We are currently ‘divers without diving’, focusing entirely on building the app. To keep my social media alive, I now buy high-quality stock footage, research the animals and edit videos about things that fascinate me. It keeps my own passion alive while growing our audience.

What has been your most exciting underwater encounter so far?

It was definitely watching a pair of flamboyant cuttlefish during their mating season in the Indo-Pacific. I got to see them walking along the seabed, hunting by shooting out their tentacles and communicating with each other. The male was following the female and each were constantly changing colours, sending mesmerising waves of colour across their bodies. It was absolutely spellbinding.

What animal or plant would you most like to see and why?

The way I plan my trips is heavily driven by social media: I’ll see a video of a fascinating creature, check the geotag and then start researching the entire area. I never travel just for one specific animal. I want to know about the whole ecosystem: what else lives there, what the underwater landscape looks like and whether it’s worth the journey. For a long time, my feed only showed kelp forests in California or Australia, so I thought it was something too far away and out of reach. To be honest, until recently I didn’t even know that Northern Norway had these massive kelp forests. It’s much closer to me now, so exploring that cold water ecosystem and seeing what kind of macro life lives there is definitely something I want to do.

What surprises people most about your work in the water?

Personally, I am obsessed with the ‘superpowers’ of marine creatures: sacoglossan sea slugs that can photosynthesise like plants, or pleurobranchs that produce compounds being studied for anti-cancer activity and the mind-blowing symbiosis where predators and prey cooperate (like moray eels hunting with groupers/wrasses, or cleaner shrimp working inside a fish’s mouth). 

However, what surprises my audience the most is simply discovering that these creatures exist at all.

Can you tell us about some of the ocean conservation issues that impact your local area?

When we moved to Gdańsk, Poland, I was so excited to live right by the Baltic Sea, thinking about the diving opportunities. Sadly, the reality is quite heartbreaking. The Baltic is heavily impacted by agricultural runoff, which causes massive cyanobacteria blooms in the summer. When these blooms die and sink, they consume all the oxygen, creating ‘dead zones’ on the seabed where almost nothing can survive. Even walking along the beach, you notice how quiet it is and how few shells there are.

What advice would you offer other young ocean enthusiasts looking to find their community online?

Never stop being curious! The ocean is changing rapidly. It is already very different from what it was when I took my first breath underwater over a decade ago and it will look different a decade from now. My advice is to share what you love, even if you live thousands of kilometres from the nearest coast. You don’t need to be a marine biologist to advocate for the ocean.

The more you learn, the more you love. And the more you love, the more you want to protect.