Juli Berwald is an ocean scientist and science writer based in Austin, Texas. She is the author of a science memoir and two science textbooks, and her magazine-length pieces have appeared in The New York Times and National Geographic , among other publications. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a Ph.D. in ocean science in 1998. [1]
Berwald is the author of the science textbooks Focus on Earth Science California, Grade 6, and Focus on Life Science California, Grade 7, published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill in 2007.
Her science memoir, Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone, was published by Riverhead in 2017. It was reviewed by librarian Elissa Cooper for Library Journal , [2] librarian Nancy Bent for Booklist , [3] bookseller Hank Stephenson for Shelf Awareness , [4] Leslie Nemo and Andrea Gawrylewski for Scientific American , [5] jellyfish expert Lisa-ann Gershwin for Nature, [6] Maura M. Lynch and Jinnie Lee for W magazine, [7] and Erika Engelhaupt for Science News . [8] Publishers Weekly included it among "The Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2017". [9] In addition, the book was briefly mentioned by Alex Crowley for Publishers Weekly's Fall 2017 Adult Announcements, [10] by Jennifer Ridgway for Brightly, [11] by Eliza Thompson for Cosmopolitan, [12] by Jane Ciabattari for BBC Culture's Between the Lines, [13] and by Chelsea Stuart for Jetsetter. [14]
An excerpt from Spineless was featured in a 2017 issue of Discover magazine. [15]
Berwald and Spineless were a major influence for artist Marina Zurkow's conceptual climate-change themed project, Making the Best of It. [16]
Berwald wrote about the publishing process and her book's difficulty of not fitting neatly into the science or memoir genres for the National Association of Science Writers. [17]
In April 2022, her book Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs was published by Riverhead Books. The book combines memoir and science to study the coral reefs and the scientists, researchers, philanthropists, and filmmakers who are working to preserve their existence. [18]
In 2009, Berwald reported for Wired on the creation-evolution debate in Texas and its impact on the state's science education standards. [19] This debate was further explored in her role as a school science textbook author in the 2012 documentary film The Revisionaries . Also in 2009, Berwald wrote for Oceanus magazine about the sedation of whales entangled in fishing lines, [20] the key threats to Emperor penguins, [21] and yellow-band disease in coral reefs. [22] She also wrote an article for Oceanus that same year about seafloor vents as an iron-rich nutrient source for organisms. [23]
In 2010, Berwald wrote for the University of Southern California on the value of editing. [24]
In 2011, Berwald wrote for Inside Science about conservation efforts around the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit. [25]
In 2014, Berwald wrote for HuffPost about the methods of searching for life on Mars. [26]
Also that year, Berwald contributed a New York Times op-ed [27] about the expansion of the Suez Canal, which was proceeding without environmental reviews. Her concerns focused on the heightened opportunities that the expansion presented to invasive species like Rhopilema nomadica, with implications for the Mediterranean Sea.
In 2015, Berwald contributed to a Nature News in focus article about the Nicaraguan Grand Canal project. She noted its similarity to the Suez Canal expansion, in lacking environmental reviews. [28] She followed with a HuffPost blog entry in August 2015 about the progression of the issue and the increasing numbers of concerned scientists. [29]
Also in 2015, Berwald wrote for HuffPost about the possibility of carbon capture and sequestration for the Keystone-XL Pipeline project. [30] In February 2016, Berwald disputed Benroy Chan's column in The Daily Texan about carbon capture and storage.
In March 2016, Berwald wrote about the regenerative abilities of the moon jellyfish Aurelia for National Geographic. [31] In May 2016, in another National Geographic article, she interviewed Rachel Buchholz about her book Amazing Moms: Love and Lessons from the Animal Kingdom. [32]
In August 2016, she wrote about sea anemone research's impact on repairing hearing loss. [33]
In September 2016, Berwald co-wrote a Slate article with Elizabeth Devitt about Austin's focus on the word "weird". [34]
In December 2016, Berwald wrote for Hakai magazine on the uncertainty around and limited oversight of jellyfish harvesting and fisheries. [35]
Berwald wrote following article as part of her doctoral education at the University of Southern California:
Berwald was interviewed in a 1999 article about the automation of sampling equipment and data in oceanography and marine biology. [36]
In 2013, Berwald was featured in Episode 11 of Texas Business Women's Women. Connected. podcast about "Building relationships and rapport over Skype". [37]
Berwald interviewed author Stuart Rojstaczer in October 2014 about his book The Mathematician's Shiva. [38]
In November 2017, Berwald was interviewed about Spineless by Laura Rice for the Texas Standard. [39]
In 2007, Berwald wrote for Redbook about how motherhood had changed her perspective on life, but that her 10 years as a marine biologist aided in other situations. [40]
In May 2014 on Medium, she wrote about her grandmother's impact on her life and her passing in April that year. [41]
Cnidaria is a phylum under kingdom Animalia containing over 11,000 species of aquatic animals found both in fresh water and marine environments, including jellyfish, hydroids, sea anemones, corals and some of the smallest marine parasites. Their distinguishing features are a decentralized nervous system distributed throughout a gelatinous body and the presence of cnidocytes or cnidoblasts, specialized cells with ejectable flagella used mainly for envenomation and capturing prey. Their bodies consist of mesoglea, a non-living, jelly-like substance, sandwiched between two layers of epithelium that are mostly one cell thick. Cnidarians are also some of the only animals that can reproduce both sexually and asexually.
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy.
Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.
Jellyfish, also known as sea jellies, are the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, which is a major part of the phylum Cnidaria.
Sylvia Alice Earle is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998.
Zooxanthellae is a colloquial term for single-celled dinoflagellates that are able to live in symbiosis with diverse marine invertebrates including demosponges, corals, jellyfish, and nudibranchs. Most known zooxanthellae are in the genus Symbiodinium, but some are known from the genus Amphidinium, and other taxa, as yet unidentified, may have similar endosymbiont affinities. The true Zooxanthella K.brandt is a mutualist of the radiolarian Collozoum inerme and systematically placed in Peridiniales. Another group of unicellular eukaryotes that partake in similar endosymbiotic relationships in both marine and freshwater habitats are green algae zoochlorellae.
Margaret Wertheim is an Australian-born science writer, curator, and artist based in the United States. She is the author of books on the cultural history of physics, and has written about science, including for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Guardian, Aeon and Cabinet. Wertheim and her twin sister, Christine Wertheim, are co-founders of the Institute For Figuring (IFF), a Los Angeles–based non-profit organization through which they create projects at the intersection of art, science and mathematics. Their IFF projects include their Crochet Coral Reef, which has been shown at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Hayward Gallery (London), Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. For her work with public science engagement, Wertheim won the 2016 Klopsteg Memorial Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers and Australia's Scientia Medal (2017).
Brian Skerry is an American photojournalist and film producer specializing in marine life and ocean environments. Since 1998 he has been a contributing photographer for National Geographic magazine with more than 30 stories to his credit, including seven covers. In 2021 Skerry won a Primetime Emmy Award for his role as producer in the miniseries, Secrets of the Whales.
Paul Arthur Zahl was an American explorer and biologist. He was a frequently published author and columnist as well as a respected photographer. He served as senior scientist to the National Geographic Society from 1958 to 1975.
Palma Aquarium is a commercial aquarium and park that first opened in 2007 in Palma, Mallorca, Spain. The aquarium is the property of Coral World International. The aquarium is 500 m (1,600 ft) from Playa de Palma beach, and includes 55 tanks which are home to over 700 different species from the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. One tank, "Big Blue" is 8.5 m (28 ft) deep, the deepest shark tank in Europe, and it also contains the largest collection of live coral in Europe The park was awarded "Best Business Initiative in the Balearics 2007", awarded by Actualidad Económica magazine, and was awarded the "2007 Accessibility Prize" by the Consell de Mallorca.
Allison Pataki is an American author and journalist. Her six historical novels are The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, The Traitor's Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold and the Plan to Betray America, The Accidental Empress, Sisi, Empress on Her Own, Where the Light Falls, and The Queen's Fortune. Beauty in the Broken Places is her first memoir.
Lisa-ann Gershwin, also known as Lisa Gershwin, is a biologist based in Launceston, Tasmania, who has described over 200 species of jellyfish, and written and co-authored several non-fiction books about Cnidaria including Stung! (2013) and Jellyfish – A Natural History (2016). She provides independent advice related to jellyfish worldwide to the media, online and via The Jellyfish App. She was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2021 Tasmanian state election running as an independent in the electorate of Clark.
Susan Middleton is an American photographer and author based in San Francisco. She is most known for her photographs of rare and endangered animals, plants, and sites. She was Chair of the Department of Photography at the California Academy of Sciences from 1982 to 1995, where she currently serves as Research Associate.
Kathleen Staudt is a former professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she held an endowed professorship for western hemispheric trade policy studies. Her courses focused on topics such as public policy, borders, democracy, leadership and civic engagement, and women and politics. After retiring on September 1, 2017, she became Professor Emerita.
Luiz Alves Rocha is the Curator and Follett Chair of Ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of California Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University.
Liz Neeley is a science communicator, researcher, and founder of Liminal Creations. She was formerly the Executive Director of The Story Collider, a nonprofit organization that focuses on true, personal stories inspired by science. She began her career in marine biology and conservation and has since become an expert in the use of narrative storytelling for effective science communication.
Laurie Ann Thompson is an American writer. She is known for her children's books and books for young adults. Thompson is a winner of one of the 2016 Schneider Family Book Awards for her book, Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, which was illustrated by Sean Qualls.
Ruth Deborah Gates was the Director of the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology and the first woman to be President of the International Society for Reef Studies. Her research was dedicated to understanding coral reef ecosystems, specifically coral-algal symbiosis and the capacity for corals to acclimatize under future climate change conditions. Doctor Gates is most accredited with looking at coral biology and human-assisted coral evolution, known as super corals, as notably seen in the documentary Chasing Coral, available on Netflix.
Billie Sue Mosiman was an American writer. Mosiman was known for her novels and over 200 short stories that encompassed the genres of horror, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers and suspense fiction.
Miguel Mies is a Brazilian academic, oceanographer, and researcher. He is currently a professor at the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo (IO-USP) and leads the Coral Reefs and Climate Change Laboratory (LARC). He also serves as the research coordinator for the Coral Vivo Project and is the vice president of the Coral Vivo Institute.
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