Celebrating Independence Day with Peter Neill of the World Ocean Observatory

July 4, 2021

Cheers to America and her beautiful coasts

In this episode, in celebration of Independence Day around the American Shoreline, Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham welcome ocean education and communication pioneer Peter Neill to the show. Peter Neill is an author and an editor on environmental and ocean issues, and the founding Director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place for education and information exchange on the health of the ocean. Previously President of the South Street Seaport Museum from 1985-2005, he was tenured as a Research Associate at the Climate Change Institute, University of Maine in 2015.

Show Transcription
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Peter Ravella & Tyler Buckingham

Peter and Tyler joined forces in 2015 and from the first meeting began discussing a project that would become Coastal News Today and the American Shoreline Podcast Network. At the time, Peter and Tyler were coastal consultants for Pete’s firm, PAR Consulting, LLC. In that role, they worked with coastal communities in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, engaged in grant writing, coastal project development, shoreline erosion and land use planning, permitting, and financial planning for communities undertaking big beach restoration projects. Between and among their consulting tasks, they kept talking and kept building the idea of CNT & ASPN. In almost every arena they worked, public engagement played a central role. They spent thousands of hours talking with coastal stakeholders, like business owners, hotel operators, condo managers, watermen, property owners, enviros, surfers, and fishermen. They dived deep into the value, meaning, and responsibility for the American shoreline, segment-by-segment. Common threads emerged, themes were revealed, differences uncovered. There was a big conversation going on along the American shoreline! But, no place to have it. That's where CNT and ASPN were born.