Steven Katona

Overview

Steve began work on ocean health in 2008 leading collaborative efforts of Conservation International (CI) the New England Aquarium National Geographic and Sea Around Us then joining those efforts with the University of California s (Santa Barbara) National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and more than 65 scientists and ocean experts to develop the Ocean Health Index. As managing Director Steve helps integrate work of the scientific team at NCEAS with that of the CI communications and development team including Web site content reports conference presentations and assistance with regional assessments (OHI ) and other outreach. Steve holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Department of Oceanography Southampton University U.K. His Ph.D. dissertation showed for the first time that sex pheromones play important roles in the reproductive behavior of planktonic marine copepods. He was a founding faculty member in the Design School at California Institute of the Arts Valencia where he taught ecology and then at College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor Maine where he taught courses in marine science and human ecology from 1972 1993 and where his laboratory pioneered collaborative studies on individual photo identification of humpback and finback whales to study their distribution abundance and population stock sub structure. As COA president from 1993 2006 he helped strengthen the college s international programs and commitment to sustainability.Steve resides in Bar Harbor Maine with his artist wife Susan and their dog Sam. When not working on the Ocean Health Index Steve enjoys family gardening and growing trees natural history hiking cooking and crossword puzzles.