Sally Snow is a Zoologist and Filmmaker originally from Pembrokeshire, in West Wales. She is based between the UK and the Philippines, where she is one of four Executive Directors for the NGO Large Marine Vertebrates Research Institute Philippines (LAMAVE), the largest independent non- governmental organisation dedicated to the conservation of marine megafauna and their habitats in the Philippines.
Raised by two naturalists in West Wales, Sally’s childhood was spent sharing the bathroom with otters, swimming in the sea and trying to avoid accidentally eating the random insects that occupied most of the family fridge (her Father is a keen Entomologist). Unsurprisingly Sally was drawn to the natural world and she later graduated from Bristol University with a BSc Joint Honours in Zoology and Psychology. A natural creative, Sally pursued a career in natural history filmmaking, initially with BBC Cardiff and later Aden Productions, a small independent company producing natural history content for BBC Wales, BBC Two and S4C.
Today she balances freelance film work with her work for LAMAVE, where she specialises in Science Communication. Her academic expertise, versatility in the field and her storytelling has seen her work as a diverse natural history filmmaker. self-shooting presenter, fixer/advisor/diving assistant for blue chip TV series, digital content creator and app developer.
For the past 7 years Sally has dedicated herself to the issues facing the world’s oceans, tirelessly committed to the conservation of marine species in the coral triangle and the people who rely on them. Her work in the Philippines has not only developed her academic expertise but in her own words has allowed her to be an explorer. Highlights include documenting the first international photographic match of a whale shark between South East Asian countries, working with a research team to study and track tiger sharks, and documenting the first live sighting of an Ornate Eagle Ray in the Philippines, expanding its current known range.
A natural public speaker, Sally has spoken at events across the world, both in an academic and storytelling capacity. She is fluent in English and Welsh and is learning Bisaya, a dialect in the Philippines. In 2019 she was the first winner of the Jackson Wild Film Festival Rising Star Award chosen for exemplifying outstanding achievement alongside extended impact.
Passionate about delivering stories that connect both people and the environment, Sally is not intimidated to delve deeper into the issues facing todays planet. Following the devastation of super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, Sally worked with ITV Wales to deliver aid to a yet unreached island affected by the Typhoon, resulting in the BAFTA award winning ‘The Tragedy of the Typhoon’ / Trechineb y Teiffw, Byd ar Bedwar for S4C/ITV Wales. The same year she presented and produced ‘Tambalang’, a short film on Philippine seaweed farmers affected by Typhoon Haiyan for BBC Three. More recently she has been undercover for BBC Three to bring the horrors of Indonesia’s dolphin tourism to light working with a team of wildlife trade investigators to expose dolphins held captive in hotels and in Indonesia’s travelling circuses (Undercover Tourist) and produced digital content for BBC’s Our Blue Planet. She also worked with the Smithsonian on a series of films on the elephant poaching epidemic in the jungles of Myanmar.