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Charles Alexander has been National Programs Branch Chief at NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program for the past five years. He represents and manages a broad portfolio of technical support, and applied science anaylsis in support of the Program's 14 field sites including environmental monitoring, emergency response, damage assessment, archeology, spatial analysis, socioeconomics, and information management. Before arriving at Sanctuaries, Charles worked for over 15 years in NOAA's Strategic Assessments Division conducting a series of natural resource management projects on a wide range of issues including coastal wetlands, estuarine nutrient enrichment, coastal data delivery, remote sensing, and shellfish growing waters. Charles completed an M.S. in Marine Science and a Masters in Public Administration at Louisiana State University in 1985. He received his B.A. in Biology-Geology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington in 1978. He was selected as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in 1978, a National Sea Grant Fellow in 1983, and a Presidential Management Intern in 1985. He lives in Germantown, Maryland with his wife and two sons.
Laura Anderson has been a consultant to the non-profit Port Orford Ocean Resource Team (POORT) since its inception in 2000. She has an intimate knowledge of the fishing industry, spending many summers commercial trolling and crabbing on her father's fishing boat. After two years of working in Coastal Resource Management for the U.S. Peace Corps in The Philippines, Laura spent a year working for a business and investment consultant firm in Vietnam. Subsequently, she earned a Master's in Marine Resource Management at Oregon State University. Her consulting work has involved social marketing and sustainability, coastal tourism management, groundfish fleet reduction, marine reserves communication and watershed council outreach and strategic planning. In 2002 Laura co-founded an Oregon-based seafood company, Local Ocean Seafoods, with a focus on sustainable fisheries and fishing communities.
Jeff Ardron is recognized as a leading marine GIS specialist in British Columbia, Canada, and has been responsible for the development of several new analysis techniques and products. His work is mostly focussed on marine reserve design, though topics ranging from offshore oil and gas to salmon farms to sustainable fisheries have also crossed his desk. He is principal marine analyst for Living Oceans Society, a progressive non-governmental organization based in British Columbia. Jeff has lived and worked on the west coast of Canada for twenty years, during which he has managed to explore many of the coast's nooks and crannies. In addition to ecology, his passions include music, fine micro-brews, and sailing -- though not necessarily in that order.
Joseph J. Bizzarro graduated from Dartmouth College in 1992 with a B.A. in Biology and will complete his M.S. degree in Ichthyology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) in the spring of 2005. His thesis is entitled Diet and Ecomorphology of the Dominant Species in the Bahia Almejas (Baja California Sur, Mexico) Ray Fishery. He has worked extensively with Dr. Gary Greene at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories' Center for Habitat Studies since 1997 and has been the Center's project manager since 2000. In addition to advanced video analysis and GIS skills, Joe has significant training and professional experience as an ichthyologist and fisheries biologist. He also maintains a position as staff scientist at MLML's Pacific Shark Research Center.
Peter C. Black is manager of geospatial information for Environmental Defense in Oakland, California, a leading, national non-partisan environmental organization that uses science, economics, and law to create durable solutions to environmental problems. He specializes in creating custom GIS applications for environmental issues.
Philip Bloch provides scientific support for conservation and restoration initiatives on the more than 2.4 million acres of aquatic lands managed by Washington State Department of Natural Resources. He studied landscape ecology as a graduate student at Duke University and has published research on behavioral ecology, the endangered species act, and marine conservation planning.
Kate Bonzon is Policy and Research Analyst for Environmental Defense, a leading, national non-partisan environmental organization that uses science, economics, and law to create durable solutions to environmental problems. She researches sustainable financing for fisheries reform, and ways to incorporate socioeconomic concerns into policy decisions. She is co-founder of Independent Architecture Group, a company dedicated to designing sustainable development and redevelopment projects, and is an advisor to Pacific Marine Farms, a sustainable aquaculture company.
Villy Christensen is an Associate Professor at the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia. He is one of the main developers of the Ecopath with Ecosim ecosystem modeling approach, and is currently focused on estimating spatial biomass trends in marine ecosystems.
A long term fishing community leader, Leesa Cobb lives on the Southern Oregon coast in Port Orford where she and her husband own and operate a commercial fishing business. Leesa has been working as communications coordinator for a community-based fisheries management effort, Port Orford Ocean Resource Team (POORT), for three years. She is a founding board member of Pacific Marine Conservation Council (PMCC), previously serving as President and Treasurer. In June 2000 Leesa contracted with Oregon State University to serve as a regional Outreach Peer for the Groundfish Disaster Outreach Program, helping fishermen who want to transition out of fishing access existing programs and services. She has helped more than fifty members of the Port Orford fishing community begin their transition to new careers.
Randy Dana is GIS Coordinator for the Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program. He received a B.A. in General Sciences from Portland State University and completed coursework for a Master of Science in Geography from the same institution.
Tom Dean is the Executive Director for the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust and has been managing estuarine habitat restoration projects for more than eight years. Mr. Dean has also managed several restoration planning projects and collaborates with Land Trusts around Puget Sound on shoreline conservation efforts. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Oregon.
Sylvia Earle, one of the world's most respected ocean scientists and explorers, is Chairman of Deep Ocean Exploration & Research, Inc. and an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. In addition, she serves as an Honorary President for the Explorers Club, Executive Director for Global Marine Conservation for Conservation International, and Program Coordinator & Advisory Council Chair for the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. She is an adjunct scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), a director of Kerr-McGee Inc., a director for the Common Heritage Corporation, and serves on various boards, foundations, and committees relating to marine research, policy, and conservation. These include the World Resources Institute, World Environment Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Duke University Marine Laboratory, Mote Marine Laboratory, Lindbergh Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resource Defense Council, and the Ocean Conservancy. In 1998 she was named by Time Magazine as one of its Heroes of the Planet. Sylvia is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Marine Technology Society, California Academy of Sciences, and World Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was one of the first scientists to research marine ecosystems, holds numerous diving records, and has spent more than 6,000 hours underwater. She is also the former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and has written more than 100 scientific and popular publications and several books including Wild Ocean: America's Parks Under the Sea and Dive: My Adventures in the Deep Frontier.
Mercedes D. Erdey graduated from Saint Stephen University in Hungary with a degree in environmental protection and landscape management. Her senior thesis described the Macrobenthic Trophic Structure and Species Interactions within a Future Marine Protected Area (Belgian Coastal Banks). Prior to matriculating at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML), she spent the academic year of 2000/2001 at the University of Gent in Belgium studying marine sciences, GIS techniques and remote sensing. Mercedes currently works at MLML's Center For Habitat Studies (Moss Landing Marine Laboratories) on a variety of GIS, remote sensing, and habitat mapping projects. For her Master of Science thesis, she is developing an automated acoustic process for the construction of seafloor maps based on quantitative descriptors of spatial features and geology.
Peter Etnoyer is a marine ecologist with a background in biogeography, octocoral systematics, and physical oceanography. He is president of Aquanautix, a consulting company that produces GIS analyses, investigations and reports in marine protected area planning, endangered species, deepsea biology and satellite oceanography. Obtain reprints and summaries of those investigations from the Aquanautix Consulting website at www.aquanautix.com.
Zach Ferdaña is a Marine Conservation Planner for the Global Marine Initiative of The Nature Conservancy. He supports marine planning efforts where the Conservancy works globally, with a focus on the Pacific Northwest coast including Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Using GIS technology and the Conservancy's ecoregional planning approach, Zach has focused the organization to adopt planning innovations in coastal, nearshore, and offshore environments. He received his degree in Environmental Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, with concentration in Landscape Ecology and Marine Mammal Biology in 1994. He began his career in marine conservation with People for Puget Sound in 1997, constructing spatial databases and analytical techniques in marine and nearshore environments for their conservation and restoration projects. He joined The Nature Conservancy in 2000 and continues to work on marine planning efforts and GIS related projects.
Rod Fujita is a senior scientist and marine ecologist at Environmental Defense, a leading non-governmental environmental research and advocacy organization. He has been working on climate change, fisheries management, and ocean wildlife protection since 1989, with a focus on crafting durable solutions that incorporate the human dimension. He is the author of numerous scientific papers, reports, and a recent book Heal the Ocean (New Society Publishers), serves on a number of state, regional, and national advisory boards, and gives frequent public lectures and workshops.
Jessemine Fung is currently with CommEn Space, a non-profit spatial analysis center, working on conservation GIS projects throughout the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies region. Prior to CommEn Space, she managed People For Puget Sound's science and habitat program. She holds an M.S. in ecology and evolutionary biology.
Dr. H. Gary Greene received an M.S. (Geology/Geophysics) from San Jose State University/Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in 1969, and a Ph.D. (Geology/Marine Geology) from Stanford University in 1977. His doctoral thesis focused on the geology of the Monterey Bay region. Gary retired from the United States Geological Survey after more than 28 years of service in 1994 when he took up the directorship of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Presently, he is professor of Marine Geology and Director of the Center for Habitat Studies, which he founded in 1994. Gary is also a part-time senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. His expertise lies in the study of active plate margins; both transform margins like California and New Zealand and subducting margins such as along South America and the Aleutian Islands. Presently, Gary's research involves the characterization of marine benthic habitats and the study of underwater landslides. Much of his time is now spent in working to standardize the way the scientific community describes and maps marine benthic habitats. He also advises several graduate students.
Tanya Haddad is an Information Systems Specialist with the State of Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program (OCMP) and coordinator of the Oregon Coastal Atlas. After obtaining degrees from Tufts University (B.S.) and Duke University (M.E.M.), she was nominated in 1998 by Connecticut Sea Grant for a NOAA Coastal Services Center Coastal Management Fellowship, and was placed with the OCMP to establish and expand a project known as the Dynamic Estuary Management Information System (DEMIS) to several Oregon estuaries and their watersheds. She has since incorporated DEMIS and several other OCMP data products into the Oregon Coastal Atlas. Tanya is also a world-class competitor and instructor in the sport of sailing.
Pat Halpin is an Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of the Geospatial Analysis Program at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. Pat specializes in geospatial analysis for ecological and conservation applications in both marine and terrestrial environments. He is a principle investigator for the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS-SEAMAP) program providing geospatial data and analysis of marine mammals, sea turtles and seabirds of the world as well as numerous other marine GIS and marine spatial ecology programs.
Jamison L. Higgins is a Physical Scientist for the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment, Biogeography Program located in Silver Spring, Maryland. She works to develop information and analytical capabilities through research, monitoring, and assessment on the distribution and ecology of living marine resources and their associated habitats for improved ecosystem management.
Matt Kendall is a biologist with NOAA's Biogeography Team at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment located in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is an expert in marine landscape ecology.
Paul Klarin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the State of Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program (OCMP). His current and past projects with the OCMP include hazards program coordination, land use plan reviews, special area management plans, permit reviews, and special projects involving GIS as related to ocean shore resources. He holds degrees from the University of Washington (M.A. in Marine Affairs), and the University of California, Santa Barbara (B.A., Political Science).
Holly Lopez graduated from California State University at Monterey Bay with a B.S. degree in Earth Systems Science and Policy in 2001 and is currently a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) studying marine geology. She works at the Center for Habitat Studies at MLML creating marine benthic habitat maps and interpreting geology from remote sensing data. For her Master of Science thesis, Holly is characterizing bedforms in the San Juan Islands, Washington, and Boundary Pass region, Canada, and investigating their potential as habitat for fishes, such as sand lance. She looks forward to pursuing a career in marine science.
John Marra is a Coastal Hazards Specialist at the NOAA Pacific Services Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Prior to this post he was a hazards specialist with the Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program and principal of the Shoreland Solutions consulting firm, where he directed littoral cell management planning efforts underway in seven Oregon coast littoral cells. John has also developed the "Guide to Littoral Cell Management Planning along the Oregon Coast." Other projects have included the refinement of models that can be used to predict extreme run-up and foredune retreat along dune-backed shorelines, as well a cooperative undertaking with the NOAA Coastal Service Center among others that, via a set of customized GIS tools, provides decision-makers with the ability to rapidly project the total water level and the landward extent of foredune retreat under different storm event scenarios. John holds a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and a B.A. in Geology from the University of Montana.
Mike Mertens has served as Manager and Senior GIS Analyst of Ecotrust's GIS team for the last four years. He has over ten years of experience in using GIS specific to various aspects of spatial data analysis and geographic information science, ranging from exploratory spatial data analysis to remote sensing, spatial statistics, and development of spatially explicit simulation tools.
Mark Monaco is a marine biologist who leads NOAA's Biogeography Program that focuses on the spatial ecology of marine, estuarine, and coral reef living marine resources. His research interests address defining and evaluating the efficacy of marine protected areas and the development of assessment approaches for place-based management. In addition, Dr. Monaco serves as the chair of the NOAA working group for the mapping of coral reef ecosystems and co-chair of the US Coral Reef Task Force mapping and information synthesis work group.
Lance Morgan is Chief Scientist for Marine Conservation Biology Institute, a non-profit conservation organization dedicated to protecting ocean life through science and conservation advocacy. He is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington's School of Marine Affairs, and a marine advisor to the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation.
Elliott A. Norse is President of Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Redmond, Washington. In 1980 he defined the concept of conserving biological diversity. His four books are Conserving Biological Diversity in Our National Forests (1986), Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest (1990), Global Marine Biological Diversity (1993) and Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea's Biodiversity (2005).
Daniel Pauly is a Professor at and Director of the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, and Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Project, devoted to studying, documenting and mitigating the impact on fisheries on marine ecosystems. In 2001 he was awarded the Murray Newman Award for Excellence in Marine Conservation Research, sponsored by the Vancouver Aquarium, and the Oscar E. Sette Award of the Marine Fisheries Section, American Fisheries Society. He was named Honorarprofessor at Kiel University, Germany in late 2002. In 2003 he was named one of UBC's Distinguished University Scholars and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Science). In 2004, he received the Roger Revelle Medal from IOC/UNESCO, and the American Fisheries Society Award of Excellence.
David Revell is currently a doctoral candidate in Earth Sciences (Coastal Geology) at University of California, Santa Cruz. He has served on the staff of the Oregon Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, as well as a NOAA Coastal Management Fellow in Coastal and Ocean Policy with the Oregon Ocean-Coastal Management Program. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.S. in Marine Resource Management from Oregon State University.
Charles Steinback is the lead Fisheries GIS Analyst and Cartographer at Ecotrust. During the last four years his work has focused on developing the Ocean Communities "3E" ANalytical framework (OCEAN), a marine GIS platform for spatially integrating socio-economic and ecological data and analyses for community-based management. Charles also serves as the lead GIS Analyst for the State of the Salmon Consortium, a joint venture between Ecotrust and the Wild Salmon Center that is dedicated to salmon stock monitoring and assessment across the Pacific Rim. He is a co-author of the consortium's first publication, Atlas of Pacific Salmon, The First Map-Based Status Assessment of Salmon in the North Pacific, to be published by the University of California Press.
Mitchell Tartt is a marine ecologist with the NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program (NMSP). He is a member of the NMSP Head Quarter's Science Team, which focuses on NMSP characterization, research, and monitoring activities. Mitchell specializes in the integration of information in support of the management requirements of the NMSP.
Janet Tilden graduated from Eckerd College in 1999 with a B.S. in Marine Science and Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in 2004 with and M.S. in geological oceanography . As a student in the Geological Oceanography Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, she completed a multidisciplinary thesis involving a mix of biology, ecology, and geology. Her research was conducted in the San Juan Islands of Washington State and concerned two main topics: 1) characterizing potential rockfish habitat using multibeam bathymetry, as a basis for establishing a network of marine reserves in the area and, 2) connecting the historical onshore geology of the islands to the offshore geology, as interpreted from multibeam/backscatter survey data, in order to trace the formation of San Juan Channel through time. Janet currently works at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.
Astrid J. Scholz is Ecological Economist and Vice President for Knowledge Systems for Ecotrust, a Portland (Oregon) based conservation organization dedicated to strengthening economics and the environment from Alaska to California. She serves on the faculty of the OSU College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science, and oversees several research projects to integrate socioeconomic information into natural resource management.
Scott Wallace (Ph.D.) is a marine conservationist, researcher, naturalist and educator presently involved with the assessment of marine fishes at risk, marine protected areas, and sustainable fisheries. He works independently through his company, Blue Planet Research and Education, and in this capacity consults to the marine conservation sector in British Columbia.
Reg Watson is a Senior Research Associate at the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia. He combines expertise in database manipulation, GIS, modeling and international fisheries to prepare detailed maps of global fisheries catch for the Sea Around Us Project.
Victoria A. Wedell is a 2004 graduate of the Marine Resource Management Program at Oregon State University. Her Master of Science thesis is entitled Capturing Local Fisheries Knowledge for Cooperative Fisheries Management Using a Participatory Geographic Information System (GIS) Approach in Port Orford, Oregon. She is currently a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow serving with the NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Jacques White recently joined The Nature Conservancy in Seattle to expand their fledgling Marine Conservation Program. He received a Ph.D. in marine, estuarine and environmental science from University of Maryland and has done estuarine research along three major US coastlines.
Dawn Wright is professor of Geography and Oceanography at Oregon State University, and the director of the Davey Jones' Locker Seafloor Mapping/Marine GIS Laboratory. Her research interests include geographic information science, marine geography, tectonics of mid ocean ridges, and the processing and interpretation of high-resolution bathymetric, video, and underwater photographic images. She has completed oceanographic fieldwork in some of the most geologically-active regions of the planet, including volcanoes under the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, including 3 dives in the Alvin submersible and 2 dives in Pisces V. Dawn serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science, The Professional Geographer, The Journal of Coastal Conservation, Transactions in GIS, and Geospatial Solutions, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences' National Needs for Coastal Mapping and Charting Committee. Her other books include Marine and Coastal Geographical Information Systems (edited with D. Bartlett, Taylor & Francis, 2000), Undersea with GIS (ESRI Press, 2002), and ArcMarine: GIS for a Blue Planet (with M. Blongewicz, P. Halpin, and J. Breman, ESRI Press, 2007). She holds degrees from the University of California-Santa Barbara (Ph.D. in Physical Geography and Marine Geology), Texas A&M (M.S., Oceanography), and Wheaton College in Illinois (B.S., Geology).
Last update: January 23, 2013
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