Benjamin Coste

Hello, I’m Benjamin. I’m a CEO living in Belgium.
Diving instructor for years, in Greece, Cyprus, the Seychelles Mexico and the Maldives. I founded AquaExposure, a school for underwater photography, video and marine interaction, built around a simple hierarchy: safety before ethics, ethics before aesthetics, aesthetics before technique.

My specialty is the study of the animal encounter. On manta cleaning stations in the Maldives, I learned to position myself without ever imposing: stay back, read the animal's path, wait for it to choose to pass overhead. With this method, the manta glides over with better than even odds, and I managed close to a hundred photos in three months without ever crowding a station.

The same principle, applied to a leopard shark met during a cruise in the northern Maldives, let me stay at its side for nearly twenty minutes, until I felt almost like an intruder even as it simply accepted my presence. That paradox changed the way I dive for good.

I'm also building Kai App, a mobile app for progressing in diving a little each day.