Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/551480
"Very few people go beneath the water," observes James Lindholm, PhD, a CSU Monterey Bay (CSUMB) researcher and educator, James W. Rote Distinguished Professor of Marine Science and Policy, and director of the Institute for Applied Marine Ecology at CSUMB (IfAME). Lindholm was also one of the key influences behind the establishment of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 1992. "The majority of those who live along the coast don't have an under- standing of what the marine environment looks like," he adds. "And that's a shame. They're missing a lot." Lindholm would like to change that. "I've spent a great deal of my career learning what's going on in the undersea world and also learning to communicate to the public," he says. "I study what the animals are doing and the analogs to what's occurring on land." The scientist believes that the waters off of Carmel's Monastery Beach and Point Lobos comprise some of the best SCUBA diving in the world. "As a tourist community, we don't really leverage that. We don't pro- mote the fact that the scenery in the waters off our coast—the rocky 136 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R / F A L L 2 0 1 5 (Left) Using a proprietary stereoscopic video system, CSUMB researchers are gathering underwater data from a 700-mile swath of the Pacific coast. (Bottom) A wolf eel is captured swimming along the sea bed in the pristine waters surrounding Point Lobos. Photos: Institute for Applied Marine Ecology at CSU Monterey Bay