Rafe Sagarin

I am a marine ecologist at the Institute of the Environment at University of Arizona. I do research on everything from the historical and current sizes of intertidal gastropods (snails) to helping businesses and governments learn to be adaptable by looking at how nature is adaptable. I am particularly interested in the Sea of Cortez, or Gulf of California, its ecological history, and the fascinating people past and present who have lived, worked, researched and journeyed there. I've taken a few forays into ecological philosophy, especially focused on the work of Ed "Doc" Ricketts, whose lab was a center of early bohemian intellectual thoughts in the early mid 20th century central California. I have also been getting fired up recently about the idea of reviving the Public Trust Doctrine as a central organizing theme for conservation. I have completed two books with the assistance of a Guggenheim Fellowship. The first, Learning from the Octopus is about what we can learn from 3.5 billion years of evolution to improve our security in society (Basic Books, 2012). See www.learningfromtheoctopus.com for more. The other, with Anibal Pauchard, called Observation and Ecology: Broadening the Scope of Science to Understand a Complex World is on how big environmental changes are changing the way we study life sciences; forcing ecologists back into practicing good old fashioned natural history, albeit at huge scales of space and time using all kinds of new technologies like remote sensing, genetics and critter cams, and opening the doors of academia to all kinds of observers of change in the natural world (Island Press, 2012). When I'm not writing books that will actually get published I'm working on screenplays that likely will never see the big screen (unless, you, dear reader, are interested in producing a movie about a Mexican immigrant girl who becomes a pro bull rider, or a California coast love story with a Volkswagen Thing as the central metaphor), and doing little works of art under the LINOZOIC name.

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