The Expedition Team was led by the famous Russian Polar Explorer Viktor Boyarsky who, in 1990, was part of the first ever international team to cross Antarctica and is well experienced in exploring the arctic regions. Viktor has a great sense of humour and needed it when trying to understand and make me understand what he wanted during the trip! Our Assistant Expedition Leader was Marie Villar  (French)  a Polar explorer who leads kayaking groups to Spitsbergen, acts as a guide in both Arctic and Antarctica and lectures in the history of Polar exploration. Marie was also appointed as the assistant astronomer to me during our voyage.
            The Expedition Historian and Photo Journalist was Dr Christine Reinke-Kunze (German), a freelance journalist who has spent many years accompanying Polar expeditions and reporting on them. Christine is a writer and researcher with numerous books to her credit and travels the world for her in depth research. Petra Glardon (German) was our Biologist/Naturalist specialising in Marine Mammals and Arctic Bird life. Petra has spent a lot of time as a wildlife biologist in Scotland, has worked as a lecturer in Antarctica and travelled widely in Argentina. Our second Russian lecturer and expert on the team was Alexander Khropov who specialised in Geology and the political landscape of the arctic and old maps of the arctic region. Alexander mainly spoke in Russian in his talks but did try to translate some of them into English for us. Phil Palmer (English) was our other Biologist/Naturalist specialist and is a tour leader with Bird Holidays (UK) travelling the world taking, advising and lecturing to tourists. Phil is a writer with a best selling Bird book and conducts research on breeding birds including a recent expedition to Chukotka. Phil met Paul in Turkey after the Solar Eclipse there on March 29th 2006.

The final member of the Expedition Lecture team was of course me, the Expedition Astronomer. It was down to me to uphold bad English jokes and humour and to also convey the excitement of the Solar Eclipse and help get the Yamal to the right/best place depending on local circumstances and the requirements of the voyage.  The weather of course was entirely beyond my control :-)
Other Expedition members who helped with the running of the voyage for PAV were hotel manager Craig (Canadian), Vladimir the Doctor , Gennedy, ships supplies, Marie, admin, and Sven - the most important crew member - the barman!