Loggerhead Marinelife Center has named the finalists for its 17th annual Go Blue Awards, and the ceremony is set for Friday, October 30 at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. Eleven finalists across three categories, a judging panel that is arguably more famous than the shortlist, and a keynote from a shark biologist who is also getting the night’s lifetime award.
Who is on the shortlist?
The Blue Ambassador of the Year award goes to an individual for conservation work done through volunteering and through the day job. The finalists are Joslin Carson, who runs a hands-on sea turtle program in San Pancho, Mexico, training volunteers to patrol nesting beaches and protecting nests in a monitored nursery; Rachel Silverstein, chief executive and waterkeeper of Miami Waterkeeper; Dr. Randall Wells, who spent 55 years co-founding and directing the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program and built the longest-running study of a wild bottlenose dolphin population anywhere; and Max Chesnes, environmental and climate reporter for the Tampa Bay Times.
A working reporter on a conservation shortlist is unusual enough to be worth a sentence. Chesnes is nominated for the coverage itself, which is a quietly radical thing for a marine center to put on a ballot.
The Blue Business or Nonprofit of the Year finalists are the Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, recognized for helping launch Florida’s Coastal Corridor and for securing a $15 million state appropriation for coastal habitat restoration; Miami Waterkeeper, for its water-quality testing and pollution investigations around Biscayne Bay; and the Perry J. Cohen Foundation, founded after 14-year-old Perry Cohen and his friend Austin Stephanos left the Jupiter Inlet to go fishing in July 2015 and did not come back. The foundation funds the Perry J. Cohen Wetlands Laboratory and endowed a scholarship at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School. This year it partnered with Loggerhead Marinelife Center and the Chapman School of Seamanship to create and fully fund a free, year-round boating safety and ocean stewardship course for teenagers.
The Blue Hatchling Youth Award is for students through twelfth grade, and the three finalists have résumés that would embarrass most adults. Ana LucÃa Perez Escalera founded De a Pokito por Puerto Rico at eleven, later created a youth hackathon on marine debris and composting, and is a NOAA Ocean Guardian Youth Ambassador. Bianca Bernhard, a senior at South Fork High School in Port St. Lucie, incorporated the Martin Oyster Restoration Initiative, which has recruited more than 60 student and teacher volunteers to recover roughly 1,600 pounds of restaurant oyster shell for reef restoration in the St. Lucie estuary. Cash Daniels has recovered and recycled more than 10,000 miles of discarded fishing line, helped remove over 50,000 pounds of trash from waterways, and written three conservation books for children.
Who is judging?
Six judges, and the list reads like a marine science hall of fame: Susan Murray, deputy vice president at Oceana USA and granddaughter of center founder Eleanor Fletcher; Kerry Sanders, retired senior national news correspondent and a previous Eleanor Fletcher Lifetime Achievement honoree; Dr. Greg Marshall, the biologist and filmmaker who invented Crittercam; Joel Sartore, the National Geographic photographer behind the Photo Ark; Dr. Edith Widder, the oceanographer who founded the Ocean Research and Conservation Association; and Jim Toomey, who draws Sherman’s Lagoon.
This year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Mikki McComb-Kobza, is also the recipient of the Eleanor Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award, given for a career’s commitment to marine conservation. Hers has been in shark research and shark conservation.
Going
Tickets are $150 and are on sale through the center, with sponsorships starting at $2,500. Proceeds go to Loggerhead Marinelife Center’s sea turtle and marine conservation work, which is the same hospital and research operation that handled Florida’s first recorded olive ridley nest this summer.
