Saturday, September 21st 5-7 p.m.
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Balboa Point Peninsula Association (BPPA) Beach
2200 Channel Rd, Newport Beach, CA 92661

Late September is arguably the best beach time in Southern California. Spend the day at the beach and then join us at sunset for a family-friendly community engagement.  Expert marine scientists from the local community and deep sea explorer Dirk Rosen (Challenger Deep) will present five (5) educational lightning talks covering topics about:
 

• How your coastal water quality is measured (and how we should make it better for ourselves)
• Engineering sustainable aquaculture and why we should do it
• Deep sea communities and establishing profitable systems of management
• California’s success and innovation in protecting resources 
• How sea level rise will affect our community

 
This family friendly event has RSVP-only seating and standing room beach. The goal is to offer innovators, policy makers, and community stakeholders an opportunity to learn and discuss how we can all work together.  

RSVP via Eventbrite or directly to Erin OToole at erin@maregroup.org by September 6th.

Speaker Bios

Will Lewis, founder of Sequence Environmental, is seeking to introduce a novel, transformative framework focused on rapidly characterizing ocean conditions to help the public make more informed decisions about whether and where to go to the beach and enter the water. Sequence Environmental seeks to integrate recent developments in aerial and aquatic drone technologies, DNA sequencing methods, and data visualization techniques into a targeted, efficient, and accessible coastal monitoring framework yielding a human health risk data layer that users could view online or via smartphone applications like Google Maps.

Christopher Oakes, MA, (Occidental College) is the Vice President of NovoNutrients, a biotechnology firm making sustainable aquaculture feed from CO₂.  He is a marine scientist, biotechnologist and professional scuba diver. Chris was previously employed as Business Development Manager at Liquid Robotics and then Chief Operating Officer for Sustainable Ocean Alliance. He serves as an industry advisor with F3, Future of Fish Feed and is on the Board of Directors at MARE. He is focused on promoting synthetic biology as a solution to some of the ocean’s greatest challenges. He is excited to be a part of the movement to inspire new possibilities for insuring the future

Dirk Rosen founded Marine Applied Research and Exploration (MARE), a non-profit organization that supports intelligent ocean management with unique technology and the largest deepsea databank on the West Coast. Prior to MARE, Dirk ran Deep Ocean Engineering where he built and test-piloted manned submersibles and remotely operated vehicles. He also worked for NASA on the International Space Station helping implement robotic standards used today. Dirk founded MARE to fill a critical data gap below SCUBA depth. MARE deploys a fleet of robotic vehicles to explore and document ocean health over time.  Dirk can be found on or under the water as an ocean engineer, scuba diver and whitewater kayaker.

Dr. Kerry Nickols is Assistant Professor, California State University Northridge. She is an interdisciplinary scientist who integrates ecology and oceanography to study coastal marine ecosystems and climate change. Her research centers around issues related to marine conservation, such as the design and evaluation of Marine Protected Areas and the impacts of anthropogenic stressors on marine populations. She holds a B.A. in Integrative Biology and Earth and Planetary Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Nickols grew up in California and is passionate about making science accessible to communities and managers in California and beyond.

Hayley Carter, Senior Science Officer at Ocean Science Trust has been working to bridge the gap between cutting edge science and ocean management in support of California’s ocean and coastal ecosystems and communities. At Ocean Science Trust, she has advanced from a California Sea Grant Fellow to her current role as Senior Science Officer where she has worn many hats – from program and grant manager, science integration thought leader, facilitator, fundraiser, and science communication expert. She is particularly proud of her role in advancing action on ocean acidification in California, building off her graduate work at San Francisco State University studying the biological impacts of changing ocean chemistry, and bring it full circle to effect policy change. She is also a fisherman, surfer, musician, and lover of the marine environment.