Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in 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.
Richard Randolph "Randy" Olson is a marine biologist-turned-filmmaker who earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University (1984) and became a tenured professor of marine biology at the University of New Hampshire (1992) before changing careers by moving to Hollywood and entering film school at the University of Southern California.
Jeremy Bradford Cook Jackson is an American ecologist, paleobiologist, and conservationist. He is an emeritus professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, senior scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, and visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. He studies threats and solutions to human impacts on the environment and the ecology and evolution of tropical seas. Jackson has more than 170 scientific publications and 11 books, with nearly 40,000 citations listed on Google Scholar.
Gilbert L. Voss was an American conservationist and oceanographer. He was one of the main persons behind the establishment of John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Florida and he spoke out successfully against several proposed real estate developments that might have threatened the ecology of the Florida Keys.
Thomas Wayland Vaughan was an American geologist and oceanographer. He worked with the United States Geological Survey and United States National Museum, investigating the geology of the West Indies, Panama Canal Zone, and the eastern coast of North America. In 1924 Vaughan became director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and held the post until his retirement in 1936. His research work concentrated on the study of corals and coral reefs, the investigation of larger foraminifera, and oceanography.
Orbicella is a genus of stony corals in the Merulinidae family. The Orbicella species complex comprises three sister species, namely Orbicella faveolata, Orbicella annularis and Orbicella franksi, all of which are shallow-water, zooxanthellate species and are native to the tropical western Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
Silvia Maciá is an American marine biologist and professor of biology at Barry University in Miami Shores, FL. Her research interests involves both laboratory and field work addressing pipefish mating behavior, seagrass community ecology, coral reef grazing ecology and seagrass restoration.
Alice Alldredge is an American oceanographer and marine biologist who studies marine snow, carbon cycling, microbes and plankton in the ecology of the ocean. She has conducted research in the open sea, at her laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara as well as in collaboration with the Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER) at the Mo'orea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research Site in Mo'orea, French Polynesia. According to the annual ISI Web of Knowledge list published by Thomson Reuters, she has been one of the most cited scientific researchers since 2003.
Katrin Linse is a German marine biologist, best known for her work on discovering new Antarctic and deep sea species.
Susan Lynn Williams was an American marine biologist and Distinguished Professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where she directed the Bodega Marine Laboratory from 2000-2010. She researched marine coastal ecosystems and how they are affected by human activities. She was a strong advocate for environmental protection, credited with helping pass legislation expanding the boundaries of Northern California's Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank national sanctuaries, increasing the area of federally-protected coastal waters.
Karen Joyce Osborn is a marine scientist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Invertebrate Zoology department. She is known for her work in marine biology specializing in mid-water invertebrates.
Carole C. Baldwin is a research zoologist, curator of fishes, and the vertebrate zoology department chair at the National Museum of Natural History. She researches the diversity and evolution of coral reef and deep sea fishes through integrative taxonomy. She is on the board of directors of the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C. She is a senior author on the educational seafood cookbook One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish - The Smithsonian Sustainable Seafood Cookbook, and the principal investigator on the Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP) which researches reefs to 300 meter depths. She was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2003.
Valerie J. Paul is the Director of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, in Fort Pierce, FL since 2002 and the Head Scientist of the Chemical Ecology Program. She is interested in marine chemical ecology, and specializes in researching the ecology and chemistry of Cyanobacteria, blue-green algae, blooms. She has been a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1996, and was the chairperson of the Marine Natural Products Gordon Research Conference in 2000.
David Roy Bellwood is an Australian marine biologist. Bellwood studies the ecology, biogeography and evolution of marine fishes, and in 2016 was elected to the Australian Academy of Science.
Earth Optimism is a movement promoting a positive outlook towards problems related to environmental or climate issues. Earth Optimism provides an alternative narrative to mainstream environmental news by highlighting the potential for humans to positively impact the environment by making small changes at individual and community levels. It focuses on positive technological advances and ecological success stories to illustrate the potential for hope in the face of environmental challenges.
Jose V. Lopez is an American-Filipino Molecular Biologist. He has been a faculty and Professor of Biology at Nova Southeastern University (NSU). in Dania Beach, Florida since 2007. Lopez has contributed as co-founder of the Global Invertebrate Genomics Alliance (GIGA), a community of scientists. He has also participated in the "Porifera - Tree of Life", "Earth Microbiome" and Earth Bio-genome Projects.
Kristen Marhaver is a marine biologist studying coral reefs and specializing in coral ecology, reproduction, and conservation. Marhaver is a senior scientist at CARMABI Marine Research Station. Marhaver was part of the group of scientists that successfully used frozen Elkhorn coral sperm to fertilize live coral eggs to raise the first lab-reared juveniles in nurseries. Some of the sperm and eggs were from geographically isolated corals of the same species. Their success allows for the possibility of breeding corals to be more resistant to increasing ocean water temperatures by breeding corals that already survive at warmer temperatures with those that live at colder temperatures.
Nyawira A. Muthiga is an African conservation zoologist who is Director of the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association Marine Programme in Kenya. She is a conservation scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Kimberly B. Ritchie is an American marine biologist. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Sciences at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Her research is focused on marine microbiology and how microbes affect animal health in hosts such as corals and sharks.
