Margaret Carruthers  (lecturer)

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 consulted in the development of a wide range of science-related materials. Currently, she is the Supervising Editor for Science at Words and Numbers in Baltimore, Maryland and the author of seven science books for children and young adults. She is also the co-author with Josie Iselin of 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 BS degree from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee and an MS degree from the University of Massachusetts. For more information on her books, visit: www.allbookstores.com/author/Margaret_W_Carruthers.html

Drew Ferrier  (panelist)

Drew Ferrier, Founder and Director of the Society of Ocean Sciences and a professor of Biology at Hood College in Frederick, MD, has over 25 years of experience teaching biology and ecology in classrooms, laboratories, and a variety of field locations from Chesapeake Bay to South Florida and the Caribbean. After graduating from Washington and Jefferson College, he obtained a masters degree at Miami University. His career began as a faculty member of a small college in western Maryland, followed by years of teaching and leading field excursions to field stations in the Caribbean. This provided a practical introduction to marine science which he formalized by completing a Ph.D. degree at the University of Maryland in Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Science. Since that time, Dr. Ferrier has been a faculty member at Hood College where he also serves as the Director of the Graduate Program in Environmental Biology. Ferrier continues to combine his interests in marine science, research, and teaching by introducing students of all ages to ocean environments.

Stephen J. Godfrey  (lecturer)

Stephen Godfrey grew up in the Province of Quebec, Canada, the middle of five children. He received his B.Sc. in Biology from Bishop’s University and completed his Ph.D. (1986) in paleontology under Dr. Robert L. Carroll at the Redpath Museum, McGill University. Following a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto, he moved to Drumheller, Alberta, the “Dinosaur Capital of Canada,” where he became involved in paleontological exhibits work for museums around the world. In 1998, Dr. Godfrey became the Curator of Paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland. His diverse research interests include work on extinct dolphins and whale, and sharks and stingrays. He is the author with Christopher R. Smith of Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology and Biblical Interpretation. For more information, visit:
www.vertpaleo.org/education/profiles/sgodfrey.cfm

Dave Harp  (panelist)

Dave Harp operates a corporate and editorial photography business from Cambridge, MD. A graduate of Ohio University with a degree in English literature, Dave was staff photographer for the Hagerstown Morning Herald and a photographer for The Baltimore Sun Magazine before establishing his own business in 1990. Harp's photos have been extensively published in magazines such as Coastal Living, Audubon, New York Times, Natural History, and Smithsonian. In 2006, he was awarded the Grand Prize by North American Travel Journalists Association for magazine photo journalism and in 2007, won First Place by The Society for Professional Journalists for the same. He is a past president of the American Society of Media Photographers and has collaborated on several books with environmental writer Tom Horton, including Swanfall; Water’s Way; The Great March; and The Nanticoke. 

Tom Horton (panelist)

Nationally known journalist, environmentalist and award-winning author, Tom Horton covered the Chesapeake Bay region for 32 years for The Baltimore Sun. He has also written for the New York Times magazine, National Geographic, Smithsonian and the Rolling Stone. An avid kayaker and beach explorer, Horton has called media attention to the detrimental pressures of population on Bay ecosystems and the impact of rising sea levels to the many islands in the Chesapeake region. Horton is the author of six books about Chesapeake Bay including Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay, An Island Out of Time, Chesapeake Bay of Light with Ian J. Plant, Water Ways and The Nanticoke with David Harp, and Bay Country which won the John Burroughs Award, given annually for the best book on nature writing in the U.S. For more information on his books:
visit: http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Horton/e/B000AQ48IO

Richard LaMotte  (lecturer) 

Richard LaMotte has been at the forefront of sea glass research since presenting his first lecture on the topic back in 2002. Sometimes referred to as “The Dean of Sea Glass,” LaMotte is the author of the master reference book, Pure Sea Glass, which was awarded a gold medal from Writer’s Digest for 2004 non-fiction Book of the Year. Co-founder and Vice President of the North American Sea Glass Association (NASGA), he has lectured at each of the NASGA Sea Glass Festivals and served as Chairman of the 2008 Festival in Lewes, Delaware. This past summer, he was the featured speaker at the inaugural Mermaid Tears Sea Glass Festival on Prince Edward Island. LaMotte has a B.S. degree in Business Admin/Marketing from St. Andrews College (Laurinburg, NC.) For more info, visit: www.seaglasspublishing.com

Megan Elyse Lloyd  (photography  workshop)

Megan Elyse Lloyd is a multi-talented artist, musician and photographer skilled at photographing beach treasures in fresh, mesmerizing and often amusing ways. Her recent 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.  Lloyd is in the Fine Arts program at the University of Maryland.

Selma Manizade  (beach jewels  workshop) 

A native of Annapolis, Selma Manizade is a graphic designer and jewelry designer who has worked with glass since 2002. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, Manizade is currently the Art Director for Chesapeake Family Magazine and Vice President of the Annapolis Arts Alliance. As an artist, she specializes in fused glass panels and glass jewelry, much of which is made of sea glass collected on beacombing forays to Maryland's eastern shore.

Lisa McCue   (shell art  workshop) 

Lisa McCue is one of today's most prolific and sought after illustrators. In the past 30 years she has illustrated over 175 children’s books including the Corduroy Bear series. (She will be selling and signing her book, Corduroy at the Beach, at the conference.) Her work also appears on fabrics, tins, greeting cards, wrapping papers and clothing. Along with her mother, Emiline, McCue creates amazing art work from shells gathered along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay. Their specialties include stylized flowers (iris, gardenia, magnolias) from oyster shells and decorative topiary-style balls and candle holders. She received her BFA from the University of Mass. For more information on her books, visit: http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Lisa_Mccue.html

Scott Neiman  (fossil  field  trip) 

Amatuer fossil hunter extraordinaire, Scott Neiman has been hunting and collecting fossils since the age of 6 and has done so in all but two states in the United States. For the last 20 years, he has concentrated his search in the mid-Atlantic region, especially fossil deposits located along Calvert Cliffs, the Patuxtent and Potomac Rivers, and throughout coastal Virginia. Neiman lectures to fossil clubs throughout the east coast and on weekends is a field specialist for Flag Pond Nature Center.

S. Deacon Ritterbush (lecturer, Chesapeake  Bay  field  trip)

Deacon Ritterbush (aka "Dr. Beachcomb") is an anthropologist and political economist who spent 25 years working as an international development strategist in the Pacific Island region consulting for organizations such as Save the Children, USAID and The World Bank. Her articles and photographs have been published in books, scholarly compendiums, newspapers, and magazines such as Country Living and La Vie Claire. Currently an eco-educator and a Senior Research Associate for the Society for Ocean Sciences. Dr. Ritterbush writes, holds workshops, and gives lectures on topics related to the beachcombing experience. In 2008 and 2009, she was a featured speaker at the North American Sea Glass Festivals. Her first book, A Beachcomber’s Odyssey, Vol. I: Treasures from a Collected Past, received a "Books for Better Living" Gold Medal for Collecting/Hobby Book for 2009 (Independent Publishers) and Honorable Mention for Most Inspirational/Self-Help Book of 2009 (Eric Hoffer Awards). Ritterbush received a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For more information, visit www.drbeachcomb.com

Chuck and Debbie Robinson   (lecturers, panelist) 

Chuck and Debbie Robinson have been interested in seashells and the seashore since childhood. They grew up on the New Jersey shore and together they have been combing beaches since 1984. Their love of the seashore and interest in sharing it with others resulted in their first book The Art of Shelling: A Complete Guide to Finding Shells and Other Beach Collectibles at Shelling Locations from Florida to Maine, published in 1995 (now in a completely revised third edition.) They are also authors of a children's book, Treasure For Our Sand Castle. The Robinson's have searched for seashells on beaches from Florida to Maine and from California to Oregon. They have also been shelling in the Bahamas, Bermuda, St. Martin, Hawaii, Canada, and in the United States Virgin Islands. They lecture extensively, presenting to schools, libraries, reading conferences, community organizations, and nature groups. Chuck studied photography and journalism and Debbie has an MA in Psychology and an MS in Education. For more info, visit: http://www.theartofshelling.com/ 

Kevin Sellner  (panelist)

Kevin is the Executive Director of the Chesapeake Research Consortium (CRC), visiting Professor, UMCES-UMD and a Research Associate with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Kevin is a plankton ecologist, with a primary focus on harmful algal blooms. As Consortium Executive Director, his primary role is to encourage active research programs across the six Consortium member institutions (www.chesapeake.org) and their extended partners. Sellner and CRC also administer the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee to provide scientific guidance for the Program’s restoration activities. Kevin serves as an Associate Editor for Estuaries and Coasts, review editor for Aquatic Microbial Ecology, and Board member for the non-profit Water Stewardship, Inc. He strives to insure that the Consortium is considered a source of unbiased scientific information, providing topic-specific workshops, conferences, fora, and reviews on critical regional issues. Kevin also teaches in the UMD Marine Estuarine Environmental Science program. 

John Wilson   (panelist) 

A "product" of the East Coast having lived in Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, John Wilson is the Associate Director for Stewardship for Land Acquisition and Planning for Maryland's Department of Natural Resources. One of his job responsibilities is to oversee the acquisition of public lands and then determine how best to mange such resources once acquired. Wilson is knowledgeable about laws affecting beach access in MD and in surrounding states. Formerly with the Rivers and Trails section of the National Park Service, Wilson has a BS degree in Biology from the U. of Delaware and an MA in Planning from the U Penn. 

Pam Wilson  (Driftwood  field  trip)

A lifelong beachcomber, Pam has ‘combed shorelines in Australia, Jamaica, Hawaii, Southern California, throughout the Mediterranean, and up and down the U.S. East Coast seeking shells, stones and beach glass. Her favorite beach treasures at the moment are bones, skulls and pieces of vertebrae that she comes across while 'combing shoelines along Calvert Cliffs and on various other regional beaches. A graduate of Wilmington College in Ohio, Wilson is currently the Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.