The SeaStar Foundation is seeking other organizations and individuals to help in the fight to preserve and replenish our ocean resources. Although SeaStar is fairly new on the scene we are making rapid progress in becoming an effective force in the quest for knowledge and policy making necessary to reverse the degradation of our marine environment.
I’m Gale Myers, founder of the SeaStar Foundation. I have spent the last nine years with several environmental groups directing educational programs and coordinating logistical support providing boats and funding for various research projects.I came into these positions “through the scuppers” by spending the previous 25 years and 50,000 miles at sea.I began with a 26′ teak sloop bought in Cowes on the Isle of White, England. After teaching myself to sail and repairing the damages resulting from some of t he more dramatic epiphanies encountered in the process, I set out for 8 years living aboard, cruising solo and without an engine to the Mediterranean Sea, Madeira, Canary Islands, trans-Atlantic, throughout the Windward Islands, Grand Cayman, and finally to Florida. All navigation was done by dead reckoning, head scratching, and celestial navigation with a plastic sextant and a digital watch. During the following years I was a charter captain, delivery skipper, and had a boat maintenance and repair business in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.I learned GPS navigation from Texas Instruments and spent several seasons as a navigator for a research vessel on the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in the Arctic.
In the mid 1990’s I began working in Florida as program director for an environmental group and was involved with the Broward County School System, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of Miami, to name a few.Wanting more freedom to shape my own agenda I founded The SeaStar Foundation in 2003.
Last summer the SeaStar Foundation supplied a mother ship for a shark tagging research program being conducted at Glovers Reef, Belize.It provided food and lodging for members of the research teams and served as a convenient spot for meetings and breaks during the arduous work.The research effort is headed by the Pew Institute of Ocean Science. SeaStar has also lent support to the National Coral Reef Institute in their study of the interrelationship of Caribbean coral reefs by tracing the genetic makeup of various species living on the reefs.The Foundation provided a dive vessel and logged coordinates for the Harbor Branch Institute to conduct a state funded survey of the harmful algae growth plaguing the reefs off the eastern coast of Florida.It provides a $10,000 per semester scholarship to a brilliant student studying at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science of the University of Miami.He is under the guidance of the Pew Institute of Ocean Science which is located on the campus. SeaStar provided the Pew Institute with 4 hours of video footage for their project in Belize and 14 hours of footage for a great white shark predation study lead by their protégé, Neil Hammerschlag.
We have just begun. We are seeking a vessel to be donated for the Mast Academy, a marine science magnate school on Key Biscayne. We need a vessel suitable for conducting pelagic studies in the Gulf Stream and more research on the coral reefs of the Caribbean. We are organizing more field studies in the marine sciences at the high school and middle school level. We are gearing up to provide fun boat excursions for underprivileged children. There are so many ways we can promote a more enlightened awareness of the oceans.
