Carl Safina explores how the ocean is changing, and what those changes mean for wildlife and for people. His writing conveys the scientific dimensions as well as moral and social implications of our relationship with nature.
His earlier work focused on seabird ecology, then on policy. In the 1990s he helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, re-write U. S. federal fisheries law, work toward international conservation of tunas, sharks, and other fishes, and achieve passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty.
Safina, whose PhD in ecology is from Rutgers University, is author of six books, and more than a hundred scientific and popular publications on ecology and oceans, including featured work in National Geographic and The New York Times, and a new Foreword to Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us.
He has been profiled on Nightline and twice in the New York Times; named among “100 Notable Conservationists of the 20th Century” by Audubon Magazine; and featured on the Bill Moyers PBS special “Earth on Edge.”
He has honorary doctorates from Long Island University and the State University of New York. Safina is an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University‘s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and also teaches in SBU’s Center for Communicating Science.
Safina is a MacArthur Fellow, has been an elected member of The Explorers Club and a World Wildlife Fund Senior Fellow, is a recipient of the Pew Scholar’s Award in Conservation and the Environment, and a recipient of Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo’s Rabb Medal, among other honors.