About Devocean Pictures
After leaving St. Eustatius (Caribbean Netherlands) in 2015, we set up Devocean Pictures to share our love for the ocean and all the weird and wonderful life from around the world. Devocean Pictures offers creative content development: (Visual) storytelling to open hearts and minds.
After years of exploring various Indonesian islands, the call of our Statian Blue Beads got stronger and stronger. Eventually, we came back to promote and present Statia’s natural, cultural, and historical treasures. We are currently creating content for the St Eustatius Tourism Development Foundation, where we combine film, photography, and written content to promote Statia’s beauty, as well as link the work of other organisations and initiatives such as WOW! At the same time, Yoeri is providing footage to EMS Films in support of their initiative to film the natural wonders of the Caribbean Netherlands.
About Yoeri
Director, diver, editor, captain, diver, instructor, storyteller, filmmaker & videographer
Yoeri has felt connected to the ocean for as long as he can remember and has been working in the diving industry for over 25 years. As a Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT) he guided, taught, and managed dive centres and liveaboard operations all around the world, often in remote locations. After some time, he went into filming full-time (1996): First underwater and on boats, then nature and culture on land, and finally he took to the air with a drone.
His work includes numerous promotional films, documentation for conservation programs, productions for NGOs, and educational as well as travel programs for Dutch, German, Swiss, Egyptian and Philippine broadcast companies. He can teach various specialities in English, German and Dutch (PADI, NAUI, SSI).
His motto: Follow your heart.
About Nicki
Activist, camera operator, chief editor, director, diver, geographer, guide, networker, photographer, translator and writer
Nicki has been drawn to the ocean since her first visit to the sea. Whenever she felt unsure about what to do or in any other way disconnected she would go and consult the ocean. Strongly interested in photography and writing she decided to learn more about the world and how to protect it and studied Geography, Management of the Environment and Politics in Bochum and Berlin (Germany). Afterwards, she worked for several years for non-governmental organisations on various projects and campaigns from energy and climate justice to trade and investment policy and raw materials (all-time favourite: PowerShift e.V.).
Just when she had decided to become a freelancer, hoping to focus more on researching and writing this way, she fell head over heels in love with diving – and Yoeri. She became a PADI instructor in 2012 and, in the beginning, she managed to integrate translating, writing and a bit of photography, mainly for NGOs, into her new aquatic life. Unfortunately, that got less and less over the years. Devocean Pictures is the perfect stage to combine her passions and skills more than ever before.
„Storytelling fascinated me already early on in life. Fantasy or real, written or in pictures. Travelling opened up new horizons and stays one of my inspirations, especially nature, but also human traces therein. I use pictures to illustrate my writing and vice versa. When I started diving it felt like a whole new universe, another dimension suddenly revealed itself. So much to discover! I needed time to perfect my diving skills, to study the underwater realm and to save up for photo equipment to allow me to share this world with others not just in words. Only recently I started to work up the courage to present my vision to others, like on our website and social media channels.“ – Nicki
Her motto: Dive into life with love and devotion.
About us
We – Yoeri & Nicki – met in 2011 at the back of a dive centre in the Philippines and started to weave our backgrounds, interests and visions into one: Devocean Pictures is fuelled by our passion and love for the ocean as well as the rest of this weird and wonderful world (check especially video section and/or photo section). Devocean Pictures shows how we see this world, the beautiful as well as the disturbing, destructive, and frustrating aspects of economy and society today (see particularly entries in English Blog, but also stories in German).
It is not about us, but about what we do and why. It is painful to stand by and watch the suffering, sickness and death of loved ones. What is happening to our oceans as well as nature on land is touching us on so many levels. But not everything is lost yet, there is still so much beauty and so many fascinating creatures out there that need our help as we need theirs.
About our love for the ocean
As we only protect what we know and care about, we start right there by creating videos, photos, and (visual) stories in English and German to introduce various parts of the world and diverse ocean life to you. We explain animal behaviour, feature initiatives, spread the good news, demystify the image of diving as an extreme sport, and present whatever else we do, like, support and find relevant to share in order to save our blue planet (though the planet will surely survive us).
Even though we think it is the time to show the beauty of the world, we can’t turn a blind eye to the dark sides as the solutions have to fit the problems at hand: waste, pollution, destruction, exploitation, abuse, … which are threatening our world (oceans). We are all connected and it’s not too late to act and change the path we are on. Read more about our vision, mission and work on That’s Devocean.
About diving
We believe that education leads to conservation – on land or underwater. Therefore we show how extraordinary our planet is, document diversity, explain behaviour as well as highlight problems and solutions. Rules and regulations are needed, nevertheless, our attitudes and actions matter.
We practise diving deluxe for our own enjoyment and personal growth as well as offer it as a personalised diving service for customers: Diving deluxe – With love and devotion.
To protect our underwater treasures from destructive diving practises we focus on improving the buoyancy control of all our students and dive buddies. Respect the environment, control your movements and positions and at the same time, you’ll save energy and conserve air. The better your buoyancy control the more you can enjoy the natural wonders of the sea.