Margaret Carruthers
Margaret Carruthers is a geologist whose work has taken her to many parts of North America and the Pacific and South Atlantic Ocean. For more than 10 years, Margaret was a teacher and a consultant for developing a wide range of science-related materials. She was the Supervising Editor for Science at Words and Numbers in Baltimore, Maryland. The author of seven science books for children and young adults, she co-authored the best-selling book, Beach Stones. Her awards include runner-up for The Daily Telegraph/BASF Young Science Writer Awards 2000, and overall winner of the 2000 Geologists’ Association Earth Alert Rockwriters’ Essay Competition for Exploring the Longest Volcano on Earth. Carruthers received her MS degree from the University of Massachusetts.   

Terri Kirby Hathaway
An avid beachcomber, committed environmentalist, and founding member of the Beachcomb Alliance, Terri Kirby Hathaway is the Marine Education Specialist for North Carolina’s Sea Grant Program. Her duties include identifying and coordinating coastal curricula for use in classrooms, organizing teacher workshops, and publishing a marine education newsletter, Scotch Bonnet. Terri is also an education associate with the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence and has presented at conferences for various education organizations including the North American Association for Environmental Education. Prior to joining Sea Grant, she spent more than 18 years as the education curator for the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. Earlier in her career, she worked as a biological technician and researcher in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Terri holds a master’s in science education from East Carolina University.

Megan Elyse Lloyd
Megan Elyse Lloyd is a multi-talented artist, musician and photographer skilled at photographing beach treasures in fresh, mesmerizing and often amusing ways. Her artistic collaboration with Deacon Ritterbush in A Beachcomber's Odyssey resulted in the book being short-listed for the 2009 Eric Hoffer Award for "Cover of the Year." She is hoping to reprise that honor with Ritterbush's up-coming 2nd Volume: Strands in the Sand. Meagan is an Art major at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Gerhard Kuska
Gerhard Kuska is President and CEO of Ocean Strategies, an ocean management-consulting firm providing strategic advice and services to public, private, academic, and international entities on ocean, coastal, and maritime issues. As a Principal with Good Harbor Consulting in Abu Dhabi, he oversaw the development of the Emirate’s first-ever integrated strategy for its marine and coastal areas. Dr. Kuska worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. As Director of Ocean and Coastal Policy in the Executive Office of the President, he advised the President and the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, and oversaw the implementation of the President’s Ocean Action Plan. He received his Ph.D. in Marine Studies from the University of Delaware.

Lisa McCue
 Lisa McCue is one of today’s most sought-after illustrators. In the past 30 years, Lisa has illustrated more than 175 books for children, and has written and illustrated the bestselling Quiet Bunny books. (Visit www.lisamccueillustrator.com/Lisa_McCue) In addition to Quiet Bunny, she has created many of today’s most recognizable children’s book characters, including the world of Corduroy Bear. Lisa has received numerous awards for Best Book of the Year, CCBC Choice Books, and as the Junior Library Guild Premium Selection. The Society of Illustrators has also selected many of her books for the Original Art Show, featuring the best art in children’s books. A committed beachcomber, this is Lisa’s third year at the International Beachcombing Conference sharing her skills in shaping exquisite flowers out of oyster and other shells, as taught by her mother Emeline.

Scott Nieman
Fossil hunter extraordinaire, Scott has been hunting for and collecting fossils since the age of 6 and has done so in Thailand and in all but two states in the United States. For the last 20 years, he has concentrated his search mainly in the mid-Atlantic region, especially in fossil deposits located along Calvert Cliffs, the Patuxent and Potomac Rivers, and throughout coastal Virginia. He lectures to fossil clubs throughout the east coast and recently had his first paper on fossils published by The Calvert Cliffs Marine Museum. Scott works for Patuxent Naval Air Station and on weekends is a field specialist for Flag Pond Nature Center.

Ed Perry
Ed Perry is a native Floridian, a park ranger at San Sebastian Inlet State Park, Fla., and an avid fisherman and “sea bean” (or drift seed) collector who co-authored the book, Sea-Beans From the Tropics: A Collector's Guide to Sea-Beans and Other Tropical Drift on Atlantic Shores.  Ed began collecting sea beans as a child while on the beach fishing, earning a quarter a bean from his grandmother who’d then give them to customers at her Sea Bean Boutique gift shop. As an adult, he became affiliated with a loose-knit group known as “The Drifters” (like BAI’s “low tide” clubs) who studied, collected, and wrote about driftseeds on a worldwide level. He now spearheads the 16 year old International Sea Bean Symposium and Beachcomber Festival (www.seabean.com) in Cocoa Beach and publishes the tri-yearly “Drifting Seed” newsletter, which connects oceanographers, botanists, herbariums, libraries, surfers, beachcombers, park rangers and jewelers from across the world to sea bean news.

Deacon Ritterbush
Eco-educator Deacon Ritterbush (aka "Dr. Beachcomb") is a sustainable development strategist committed to promoting eco-care and “willing stewardship” by getting people back outside to play via beachcombing. Founder of the International Beachcombing Conference and co-founder and President of the Beachcomb Alliance International, she is an inspiring speaker who lectures across North America on sea glass and beach pottery sources; beach tracking; and the archaeology of beachcombing. She has been a guest speaker at the NASGA sea glass festival, Canada’s Mermaid Tears Festival, Florida’s Sea Bean Symposiums, and the International Beachcombing Conferences. Lead strategist and coordinator of the 2011 Kava Bowl Ocean Summit (www.kboceansummit.org), Deacon authored the award-winning book, A Beachcomber’s Odyssey, Vol. I: Treasures from a Collected Past. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For more information, visit www.drbeachcomb.com.

Rebecca Siswick
If beachcombing can change one’s life for the better, Rebecca Siswick bears testimony to this.  An artist and graphic designer, Rebecca became involved in beachcoming, both for the treasures one can find and as a way to calm her spirit, nearly a decade ago. A once avid sea glass collector, she has more recently become interested in tracing American history through the numerous shards of beach pottery she finds on shorelines surrounding Massachusetts Cape Anne peninsula north to Maine. Now Vice-President of the Beachcomb Alliance, she spends her time organizing low tides clubs; researching local beach access issues on the east coast; and volunteering at beachcomb and ocean related conferences.

Jay Taylor
A native of Delaware and a life long beachcomber, Jay has been an avid collector of beach rocks since childhood. Then he met sea glass specialist Richard LaMotte, read his book, attended the 2008 North American Sea Glass Festival, and befriended British Sea glass collector and artist, Penny Parker. After that conference, Jay began combing beaches up and down the Delaware Bay for sea glass and subsequently joined Penny on frequent combing expeditions along the northeast coast of England where he became hooked on the exquisite beauty of English sea glass. Now an avid and knowledgeable collector, Jay runs Penny’s U.S.-based English Sea Glass business while also acting as General Manager of the University of Delaware’s Virden, Center.

Charlotte Vick
 “All oceans, all the time,” Charlotte Vick is a leading ocean champion, and mover and shaker in the ocean conservation world. The founder and President of RLLP Ocean Endeavors, she is also the Strategic Partnership Coordinator for the Sylvia Earle Alliance and Curator of Google Earth's "Explore the Ocean" layer, where she serves as lead editor and content manager for the educational outreach project. She enthusiastically supports Mission Blue and all the initiatives, campaigns and efforts resulting from Dr. Earle's TED Wish to create global "Hope Spots" of marine protection. Charlotte’s passion for ocean life has its origins in her work on island issues for the US governments in American Samoa and Micronesia and she credits her work at the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research for honing her knowledge in ocean science, engineering, geography and cartography.

Blair Witherington
Blair has been a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute where he has been involved in sea turtle biology, conservation and rescue since 1992. He is an adjunct professor in the Department of Zoology, University of Florida and served as President of the 20th International Turtle Symposium and is Vice Chair of the NW Atlantic region for International Union for the Conservation of Nature. He has contributed numerous scientific articles and book chapters on sea turtle biology and conservation, including a volume on the loggerhead sea turtle. He is also the author of Florida’s Living Beaches: A Guide for the Curious Beachcomber and, with his illustrator wife, Dawn, has just released Living Beaches of Georgia and the Carolinas. Blair received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Florida.

Dawn Witherington
Dawn is a graphic design artist and scientific illustrator trained at the Art Institutes of Colorado and Ft. Lauderdale. Her art and design are prominent in natural history books, posters, exhibits, and a line of sea-themed greeting cards. Together, she and her husband, Blair, merge their art, writing, photography, and design into a variety projects, including the collaboration of their most recent book on Beachcombing in Georgia and the Carolinas. For more information on her work, visit www.dawnwithington.com.