Introduction: Robin Craig

My life has been a multi-start attempt to blend my love of the oceans, my interest in science, and my humanities bent into a single career, and environmental law proved to be the right vocation. I grew up in southern California, in Long Beach, within biking distance of the ocean, and some of my happiest memories of childhood are of spending long afternoons boogey-boarding at the beach. In college I majored in English, but took the equivalent of a minor in biology and chemistry -- I loved learning the science, but I quickly discovered that my tolerance for lab work maxed out at 8 hours per week. The first attempt at blending the two loves was a Masters program in Writing About Science at The Johns Hopkins University, but full-time employment as a science writer is hard to come by. However, I got to be a Teaching Associate at Hopkins, which convinced me that I wanted to teach in some capacity.
After Hopkins, I pursued the teaching goal by spending two years teaching marine biology and island ecology at the Catalina Island Marine Institute on Catalina Island, California. That's also where I become SCUBA certified -- the Institute was a licensed dive facility, and we spent most of our free time out in the Zodiacs diving. I enjoyed living with the rhythms and fluctuations of the ocean, and one of the years I was there was a strong El Nino year. Just when I thought I'd gotten the native fauna down, the currents brought all sorts of strange creatures up from Mexico and even South America. : ) I also met my husband of almost 22 years on Catalina -- he was a new teacher that I was in charge of training.
After that, more grad school, because I'd figured out that I wanted to teach at the college level. My husband actually talked me into law school, because I had absolutely no inclination to be a litigator. However, environmental law suits me perfectly, and while I was in law school I got to work in the General Counsel's Office, Natural Resources Division, of the Oregon Department of Justice. There, I got to work with the lawyers who advise Oregon's environmental agencies on new programs and regulations -- proactive work, with no litigation involved. I was hooked! While there, I got to work on salmon issues, tribal issues, and all sorts of water issues, ranging the gamut from standard water quality regulation under the Clean Water Act to helping to assemble Oregon's coastal zone management plan.
After graduation, I worked for a federal judge in Oregon, who was delighted to send all his environmental cases to my desk. Toward the end of my tenure with him, the Lewis & Clark School of Law asked my to teach a night course, and my legal teaching career was launched. That's what I've been doing ever since, and it has allowed me to focus, as one of my areas of specialty, on ocean and coastal law. In particular, I've developed an interest and expertise in marine protected areas, coral reefs, ocean sustainability, and, most recently, climate change.
Its hard to work in this area of law and remain hopeful for the future of the oceans. There are so many debilitating stresses on marine ecosystems, and the law is often completely inadequate in protecting these resources. Marine protected areas aren't the full answer, but they do provide, I think, one of the best hopes for transitioning marine ecosystems through the climate change era. I've been fascinated by the efforts to protect the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands from the beginning of the legal efforts to do so and have actively compared those efforts to coral reef protections in Florida, such as the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and elsewhere in the world, such as the Great Barrier Reef Nation Marine Park in Australia. This opportunity to visit the Papahanaumakuakea Marine National Monument is, quite simply, a dream come true for me, both professionally and personally. I think large ecosystem-based protected areas like this one represent one of our best hopes in making progress toward sustainable use of the seas, even with the mounting stresses of climate change and pollution, and I look forward to observing the operations of the PMNM up close. (Okay, and on a less grandiose note, I'm also hoping to observe many of the native species while we're there. Seeing a Hawaiian monk seal in person would be spectacular!)
Robin