Photographer Mike Coots lost his leg to a tiger shark and has since become one of the staunchest advocates of sharks, dedicating his life to protecting the animal that nearly killed him. From lobbying Congress, to sharing compelling stories on social media, he’s optimistic that the world can shift the negative stigma of sharks. Coots has been featured on CBS, NBC, CNN, MSN, PBS, Discovery, Time magazine, Yahoo!, Google, the Washington Post, National Geographic, BBC, AOL, the New York Post, Adventure Journal, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian magazine, Outside magazine, TMZ, Vice, BuzzFeed, and the Daily Mail. He has written for CNN and the Huffington Post and spoken to the United Nations. He created a petition about the importance of protecting sharks in the North Western Hawaiian Islands; resulting in the largest protected area on Earth when signed into law in 2016.