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For more than thirty-three years, Allied Whale has produced scientists who have studied everything from the diet to the courting behavior of marine mammals. But many of COA’s Allied Whale “graduates” have gravitated toward environmental policy, taking on public policy and planning positions, trying to make a difference in large and small conservation efforts throughout the world. Loie Hayes ’79 profiled four such graduates: Scott Kraus ’77, Greg Stone ’82, Katrina van Dine ’82, and Nicole Cabana ’99.
DISCERNING THE DIVINE IN NATURE’S CONSTELLATIONS Katrina van Dine and the devilish details of ocean governance. Kate van Dine ’82 was twenty years old and had tried two other colleges before finding COA. Feeling “ready to be asked to think through stuff on my own and not be talked at,” van Dine immediately resonated with the curiosity she found animating COA. Faculty not only avoided dictating the answers to life’s spider web of puzzles, they were “not even telling you that there was an answer.” The qualities she found among COA’s community —being generous of heart, asking a lot of questions, having good humor, listening well and being willing to argue—have served her well in her professional and personal pursuits. One of van Dine’s first memories of COA is of being “knee deep in a minke whale carcass,” she says. “Water has always been my draw,” van Dine continues. As a member of Allied Whale, she pondered a conundrum that fascinates her still: whether, “we, the human animal, will accept our role as within the natural system or whether we will always be trying to stick our foot on the top of the pile.” While van Dine’s instinct tells her that humans are too restless to fit in, she intends to keep arguing against the urge to dominate. As research counsel with the Marine Affairs Institute of Roger Williams University School of Law and Rhode Island Sea Grant Legal Program, van Dine now focuses on ocean governance through regional structures. Building on decades of work by groups like the Gulf of Maine Council, the value of an ecosystem perspective is increasingly recognized at all levels of governance. Yet as van Dine strives to turn ecosystem theory into regional practice, the devil remains in the details. With a wry tone of understatement, van Dine reports that it is “hard to be a visionary in the political process.” Still, she believes that creative thinkers, along with courageous managers, can foment a shift from vacuuming ecosystems clean toward true sustainability. While she hesitates when asked about how quickly we might get there, she remains encouraged by the example of COA and by the caliber of its students and staff. She emphasizes the enormous gratitude she now feels for the room that COA accorded her to follow her own, still ongoing, process of emotional, spiritual and intellectual maturation. In thinking about the faculty she worked with in the late seventies, she muses, “What a constellation they made.” While the devil might be in the details, the divine can be discerned in the larger patterns.
ENGAGING A BROAD AUDIENCE Greg Stone and South Seas Conservation. The college “woke me up,” says Greg Stone ’82. Transferring after a stultifying first semester at a major university, COA’s hands-on learning thrilled him. “Suddenly we were out on the ocean or mucking around on the sand bar—that connected for me in ways no other academic experience ever had. If it weren’t for COA, I’m not sure I ever would have become as academically engaged as I have in my career and life.” Stone experienced a “visceral, emotional immersion in the ocean” through his work with Allied Whale at COA. Reading Tolstoy, Melville, Marge Piercy, Thomas Hardy, and Mary Shelley, studying philosophy and writing, aren’t standard parts of a biologist’s training but they were important parts of Stone’s education as a human ecologist. He credits COA’s interdisciplinary model with helping him build his second career—as a journalist, as well as a scientist. Much of Stone’s time in recent years has been spent working to protect New Zealand’s Hector’s dolphins. Using “pingers” developed by COA alum Scott Kraus ’77 and satellite tags, Stone has worked with commercial and recreational fishers, native Maori communities, the dolphin tourism industry, and the government to find new ways to protect the dolphins in what he calls New Zealand’s “increasingly urbanized” marine ecosystem. Another very complex project that Stone is involved with is the creation of a marine conservation area around the Phoenix Islands within the territory of Kiribati. This nation of 100,000 Micronesians has domain over thirty-three islands spread over a territory larger than the United States. With virtually all of the national welfare dependent on the selling of commercial fishing licenses, Kiribati’s survival depends on finding ways to sustain its marine productivity. Borrowing a tactic that’s been used on land—the buying of development rights to keep farmland and forests from being turned into subdivisions and strip malls—Stone is leading a team setting up the first market-based solution to ocean resource degradation. “It’s the most complex thing I’ve ever been a part of,” he says. “We’ve got dance contests, posters, fundraisers, research cruises, economists valuing natural resources, lawyers writing legislation…. We’re keying into biological, social and financial systems. Some conservationists have just one objective and no awareness of the social issues involved. COA taught me to see the big picture.”
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