Chuck Baxter, Naturalist
Posted on May 10th, 2019
The Resounding Impact of Chuck Baxter
Chuck Baxter has a long history of inspiring thousands of outdoor nature enthusiasts including his students, scientists, even US! It was Chuck’s vision that motivated our production of the original PBS series, The Shape of Life. Before that, Chuck was one of the founders of the Monterey Bay Aquarium where his vision led to many of the exhibits. When you consider these outlets alone, it’s difficult to quantify how many people’s lives Chuck has enriched through his appreciation of the natural world.
Senior Scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Behind Every Great Scientist is a Teacher with a Strong Message
Dr. Micheli is a marine ecologist and conservation biologist. Fio, as she is known to students and colleagues, is Italian. Her career path wasn’t a straight line. At college in Florence she studied animal behavior, but after graduating, she took a job collecting intertidal animals for a nature documentary. Fio loved working in the rocky intertidal. This project launched her into marine science. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina and then went to the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, in Santa Barbara, for a post doc. She never went back to live in Italy.
Going Places in the Deep Sea! 
Dr. John Pearse has spent a lifetime studying the reproductive biology and ecology of sea stars and sea urchins. His doctoral work involved exploring the biology of marine invertebrates in the Antarctic, where he overwintered in 1961 then returned with his own students repeatedly in the 1980s. They found that the abundant and ecologically important Antarctic cushion star spawns in mid-winter to produce long-lived pelagic larvae that feed on bacteria and phytoplankton in the summer. Dr. Pearse has also conducted research in the Red Sea and tropical Pacific.
Dr. Crissy Huffard’s broad research interests are to understand how marine animals live their daily lives to survive and reproduce in changing environments. She has worked primarily with cephalopods, doing her Ph.D. research on octopus behavior. Passionate about the ocean, Dr. Huffard worked for several years in marine conservation with Conservation International Indonesia, and as a consultant with the World Wildlife Fund in Washington DC