Kevin McCarey is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker whose films have been shown on the National Geographic Channel, PBS, NBC and the Turner Networks. He is also a published author.

Raised in New York's Hudson Valley, Kevin McCarey attended SUNY Maritime College. During the Vietnam War, he served as a deck officer aboard merchant ships carrying "booze and bombs" to the war zone. These misadventures are recounted in Oceans Apart: the Wanderings of a Young Mariner. Later, McCarey took a job as boat captain of a research vessel in Puerto Rico. There he took part in the efforts to stop the bombing of Culebra, recounted in his book, Islands Under Fire: the Improbable Quest to Save the Corals of Puerto Rico. This led to work as an oceanographer on a variety of expeditions from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific.