Howard & Michele Hall honored with two Awards!

Long standing members of AUAS, both Howard and Michele Hall have been honored numerous times for their amazing underwater achievements and this month was no different! Starting off 2017 as recipients of the Our World Underwater "Outstanding Achievement Award." They were also honored as recipients of the Historical Diving Society's prestigious "HANS HASS Award" in 2016. They are truly an amazing team!

Howard and Michele Hall to receive the 2016 Hans Hass Diving To Adventure Award

The Hans Hass Award Committee is pleased to announce that the recipients of the 2016 Hans Hass Award are American filmmakers Howard and Michele Hall. In announcing the award Committee Chairman Krov Menuhin stated that, “We are particularly happy with Howard and Michelle winning the Hans Hass Award as this brings it back to its very origins, that of a husband and wife underwater filming team that Hans and Lotte began 66 years ago. Now the baton that Hans passed on to my wife and I in the Maldives in 1983 maintains the continuity through Howard and Michelle Hall.”

Howard and Michele Hall are wildlife filmmakers who specialize in marine wildlife films. Working as a team, Howard and Michele have produced and directed many television films including a National Geographic Special, three episodes of the PBS series Nature and the five-hour PBS series Secrets of the Ocean Realm. Their television work has resulted in seven Emmy Awards. The Halls are perhaps best known for their underwater IMAX® films. In 1994 Howard directed the first-ever underwater IMAX 3D feature, Into the Deep, and in 1998 he directed, and Michele produced, the IMAX film Island of the Sharks. The Halls returned to the IMAX 3D format in 2005 when Michele produced and Howard directed the Warner Bros. / IMAX feature Deep Sea 3D. The award-winning sequel, Under the Sea 3D followed in 2009. Of the five highest grossing 3D films produced by IMAX Corporation, two were directed by Howard. Into the Deep has earned box office receipts of over $75 million and Deep Sea 3D has earned over $96 million. Howard and Michele have participated in many other underwater IMAX productions in various capacities, including MacGillivray Freeman Films’ IMAX film Coral Reef Adventure, released in 2003. Howard was underwater sequence director, and Michele was location manager, and their underwater production team was featured in the film. They worked again with MacGillivray Freeman Films in that capacity on Journey to the South Pacific and Humpback Whales.

In 2011 Howard and Michele were inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, and were named as Divers of the Year at New Jersey’s Beneath the Sea conference in the same year. In 2013 they received the International Wildlife Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Marine Conservation & Media. In 2015 they were recognized by the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival with the Outstanding Achievement Award for Natural

History Filmmaking.

Howard is a member of the Directors Guild and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Michele is a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Prior recipients of the Hans Hass Diving to Adventure Award are Ernest Brooks II (USA), James Cameron (Canada), Daniel Mercier (France), Stanton Waterman (USA), Bev Morgan (USA), Sylvia Earle (USA), Laurent Ballesta (France) and Professor Weicheng Cui and the Chinese State Oceanic Administration (China). The Award Committee are, Krov Menuhin (Chairman), Leslie Leaney (Executive Director), Ernest Brooks II, (Director), Laurent Ballesta (Director) and

Dietmar Fuchs (Director). The Award is generously sponsored by Blancpain, Manufacture de Haute Horlogerie, Switzerland.