Where the City Meets the Sea: Exploring LA's Santa Monica Bay with Tom Ford

September 13, 2022

A look around the LA coast with Dr. Tom Ford!

On this episode, hosts Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham speak with Tom Ford, the Chief Executive Officer of The Bay Foundation, Director of the Santa Monica Bay National Estuary Program, and Co-Executive Director of the Coastal Research Institute at Loyola Marymount University. Nearly two million people live in the Santa Monica Bay Watershed stretching from Ventura County to Palos Verdes, from the Santa Monica Mountains and Griffith Park to Baldwin Hills and out to the sea—and more than 5,000 species of animals, fish, birds, and plants make their home in the Bay and the Bay Watershed.

Show Transcription
This transcription was generated by a computer. Please excuse any errors.
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.