Tim Ecott was born in Ireland. He is the author of the hugely successful Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World. A former BBC World Service producer and correspondent in news and current affairs, he specialised on Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean islands. For two years he was based in the Seychelles where he developed a parallel career as a dive leader. He has dived all over the world from the Arctic to the South Pacific, and from Ireland to Indonesia. Passionate about the environment, Ecott also wrote the screenplay for the feature-length version of the BBC’s Blue Planet series, Deep Blue, and produced a documentary about manta rays for ITV. He is a regular contributor to Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent and writes widely on the natural world. He has a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford (2018-2020), is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers. He is trying to learn Faroese.

Tim is married and lives near Oxford.