Experts are in order of appearance for the 2007 event.  Scroll through our list of intriguing speakers; mark your calendar so you're sure not to miss a presentation or field project!
Why not make an evening of it and make a reservations for dinner following the presentation @ a sponsor restaurant  

Note:  only adult presentations and field projects are noted.  Each speaker also works with Saba's school children whether in the format of an academic presentation at the public school or in some cases field projects as well as work with Saba Sea Scouts and/or Child Focus. 

Lise van Susteren
In 2005, Lise became concerned about the direction the country was taking.  Attempting to bring a woman’s and a health professional’s perspective to the race, she ran for the U.S. Senate seat in Maryland. During the course of her race, her interest in environmental issues deepened. She recently coordinated a town meeting to help jump-start the Maryland Clean Cars Act.  In 2006, she was chosen as one of the first fifty persons to be trained at "The Climate Project" in Nashville by Al Gore to give her  version of his global warming slide show, the basis of the documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” She has since returned several times to The Climate Project in Nashville to help Gore train the trainees and has presented or is scheduled to present her slide show to more than 40 educational, religious, political, environmental and business audiences.  Lise received her Doctorate in Medicine in 1982 from the University of Paris; interned in France and completing her residency in Washington, D.C.  She has maintained a private practice as well as being Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University and an active member of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia.  Lise has recently been named eastern director of "The Climate Project" and is on the board of the National Wildlife Federation.

Kick off the start of Sea & Learn 2007 with the dramatic presentation given by Lise:  Monday, October 1, 2007 @ 5:30 p.m. at Scout's Place.

Lise will conduct carbon footprinting of individual households of both locals and visitors. 

Wes Toller
is calling Saba “home” for the next 6 months while working on the Saba Bank Project in the official capacity as Fisheries Biologist.  Wes received his Ph.D.  from the University of Southern California, while he also served as the lead scientist in a community-based project to restore declining forests of the giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) along the southern California coastline.  His post-doctoral research included managing the molecular genetics laboratory of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.  Since 2002, Wes and his family called St. Croix home where he was a Sr. Fisheries Biologist with U.S. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, of the United States Virgin Islands.  His extensive experience with reef fish, lobster and conch are a perfect fit with the Saba Bank Project where monitoring of these commercial species is just one facet of the program.  Join Wes to find out about the underwater mountain that forms the world’s third-largest atoll and has some of the richest diversity of marine life ever found in the Caribbean.

In addition to his work on the Saba Bank, Wes will also be conducting weekly field project dives to study the variances of Saba's conch populations on the coast of Saba and to those on the Saba Bank.  Sign up at The Tent  to join him.  Wes's initial presentation on the Saba Bank is scheduled for Wednesday, October 3, 2007 @ 5:30 p.m. @ The Brigadoon.

Shelley Lundvall
graduated from the University of Guelph where she worked extensively along the west coast of British Columbia conducting shellfish water quality surveys. She later spent a lot of time in northern Canada working on Environmental Impact Assessments for projects ranging from pipeline construction to gold mines.  After too many winters in Alberta, Canada they made the decision to move to Saba where her husband, Jan den Dulk, accepted a job as manager of the Conservation Foundation in 2006. Starting May 1 the Department of Environment of the Netherlands Antilles (MINA), together with the Saba Conservation Foundation (SCF), and with the support of Conservation International (CI), started an in-depth study of the Saba Bank.  This study is looking at a wide range of issues including tanker anchorage on the bank, fisheries management and classification of the various areas of the bank.  This work will be the most extensive and detailed work done on the bank and will lead to continued research on the bank for scientists from around the world.  

Join Shelley and Wes Toller on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 @ 5:30 p.m. @ The Brigadoon to learn more about this fascinating project and the importance of it to Saba and the region.

Matthew Potenski
is currently a graduate research associate with the Guy Harvey Research Institute at the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach, Florida.  Matthew is currently the co-principal investigator for the Cayman Islands Stingray Ecology and Conservation Project.  His masters thesis focuses on the effects of supplemental feeding by humans on stingray biology and ecology.  In the past seven years, Matt has done marine biological work in eight countries and encountered over fifty species of sharks and rays.  Although his primary interests are sharks and rays, much of Matt's work involves full ecology of the study organism.  This approach demands a scientist to have a good comprehension of entire marine systems so Matthew's varied background from seagrasses and coral to invertebrates, telost fish and even water chemistry are most helpful.  His latest field work brought him to the coastal areas off Tanzania where he had the opportunity to study whale sharks.  Funded by World Wildlife Fund, he was able to spend nearly 4 months on the project and managed to tag more than 30 of these goliaths of sea.  Join Matt in mid-October to learn more about the world's largest fish.
Join Matt for a fantastic photographic presentation Friday, October 5 at 5:30 p.m. @ Queen's Gardens.  Join Matt on Saba Diver's or Sea Saba's boats to dive with him and learn more.

Robert Powell
is professor of biology at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri.  He has conducted fieldwork in the continental United States, Mexico, Brazil and the Hawaiian Islands, but has focused most of his attention on West Indies amphibians and reptiles since the mid-1980's.  He is particularly interested in population and community ecology and how native species respond to human alterations of their habitats.  Bob is author or co-author (often with his students) of well over 400 scientific publications, including six books, including Reptiles and Amphibians of the Dutch Caribbean:  St. Eustatius, Saba and St. Maarten.  He has collaborated on more than 50 publications with his colleague Robert Henderson, an expert on West Indian snakes and curator of herpetology at the Milwaukee Public Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Many Saba residents and visitors had the pleasure of enjoying Powell's previous talks about "West Indian Lizards and Snakes that Eat Them" (June 2004) and "The Reptiles and Amphibians of the Dutch Caribbean (October 2005). 

Join this charismatic speaker for an interesting evening Sunday, October 7, 2007 at 5:30 p.m. @ Tropics to hear and learn about Lesser Antilles snakes.  Take a hike with Bob on Monday, October 8, 2007--time and location TBA to understand more about Saba's Racer, a snake indigenous to the island.  To read more about Bob's work, see:  www.avila.edu/biology/bobpowell/index.asp.

Melissa Hutchins
The Board of Sea & Learn met Melissa because she was on Saba last year during the event for her honeymoon.  Melissa is "chemical ecologist.".  While obtaining her master's degree from Georgia Tech, she studied the chemical defenses of gorgonian corals against disease.  The primary focus was on the disease aspergillosis, a fungal disease that affects sea fans throughout the Caribbean. Her field work was conducted mostly in the Florida Keys and the Bahamas on their coral reefs but more controlled studies were also conducted at the world's only underwater laboratory, Aquarius, located near Key Largo.  At this time, Melissa is working at Georgia State University on a project for the Navy.  The Navy puts out fiber optic cables on the ocean bottom; these cables are gobbled up by blue crabs. She is looking for natural compounds from sea hares that don't taste good to blue crabs so that eventually the wires will be coated with this compound saving the Navy the trouble of replacing the cables.  Melissa will return to Saba for this year’s program.  Join this passionate speaker who will introduce us to chemical ecology on the reef and in the ocean in general.  She promises we will all better understand the different ways marine animals and plants interact with each other using chemicals whether to defend themselves or communicate. 

Join Melissa Tuesday, October 9 at 5:30 p.m. @ Scout's Place.  Sign up at "the Tent" or email us to book your dives on Saba Divers' and Sea Saba's boats.

Demitri Deheyn
grew up in the middle of the wilderness in Congo and Rwanda, Africa.  As a young boy he went hiking often in remote places yet family vacations were to the coasts of Kenya or Tanzania where he would go snorkeling and observe coral reefs for hours.  Demitri approaches science as his childhood hero Jacques Cousteau did:  take a simple approach to discoveries: just go where no one goes, put yourself in the water, and then observe the world that surrounds you.  Deheyn completed his MS degree and his PhD in Brussels, Belgium where he also worked as a researcher for the Belgian government.  Seeking new opportunities, he was awarded an international fellowships at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography where he continues his research today.  Recent work includes heading a team of scientists in Venice, Italy, where he developed a novel bioassay [a special test] to assess sub-lethal toxicity of marine sediment. His work in Venice will be used as guidelines for realistic coastal management, involving scientists, engineers, policy makers, and city planners working together to develop guidelines for accurate public outreach; and guidelines to conduct large-scale interdisciplinary research. 

Due to the phases of the moon and how it effects Demitri's field projects, he will be on Saba October 10-17, 2007.  His bioluminescence presentation shall be Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 5:30 p.m. @ The Ecolodge.  He also has a night hike scheduled for Friday, October 12--time and starting point TBA.  Join Demitri for his marine pollution presentation on Monday, October 15, 2007 at The Brigadoon.

Tom van t'Hof
is a marine biologist recognized worldwide for his designing of marine parks. Tom is to be given credit for the design of Saba and St. Eustatius's (the more common name for our neighboring island St. Eustatius is "Statia") marine parks but also for Bonaire, Curacao and other parks from Kenya to Indonesia. Choosing Saba as his home since 1986, Tom was the original director of Saba's Conservation Foundation for its first ten years. As an active environmentalist, author and consultant, Tom is never at a loss for something to do. The Nature of Saba, Guide to the Saba Marine Park, and Guide to Saba's Nature Trails are just the books about Saba which Tom has written or co-authored.  He and artist wife Heleen own Saba's Eco-lodge Rendezvous.  Meet Tom on Wednesdays throughout the year for a pre-dinner slide presentation about Saba's montane forest given at The Rainforest Restaurant.  

For a special treat, Tom will be the narrator at the 20-Year Anniversary of the Saba Conservation Foundation presentation during the gala weekend:  Sunday October 14--don't miss this evening of a trip down memory lane and an island celebration.

Learn more about Saba's cloudforest, its uniqueness and its evolution any Wednesday when you are on Saba.  Monitor this page or contact Sea & Learn to sign up for Tom's S&L field trip to better understand what makes Saba's forest unique, the traumas it has endured and nature's magnificent healing process.

Bertrand Jno. Baptiste
was born, raised and presently resides on the island of Dominica,  "The Nature Island of the Caribbean".  Better known as Dr. Birdy, he has worked for Dominica's Forestry, Wildlife & Parks Division for more than 25 years.  Bertrand's love of nature and enthusiasm to protect it has made him a significant player on projects ranging from whale watching workshops to netting and banding of birds.  Jno. Baptiste has earned his reputation as Dominica's local bird expert, specifically with the endangered parrots.  He is a member of Dominica's monitoring and survey team as well as their planning committee for the Caribbean Endemic Birds Festival. Join Bertrand to learn more about the regions endemic bird populations, their threats and success stories.

Presentation shall be Thursday, October 18 at 5:30 p.m. @ The Ecolodge.

Stewart Chipka
is now a familiar face on Saba known as "Th'e Orchid Guy".  Chipka's interest in orchids began as a boy, when he accompanied his Czeh immigrant grandfather on trips through the Florida Everglades to gather various specimens.  Schooled as a structural engineer, but now retired, he has developed his love of orchids into a serious avocation.  Stewart is the former president of Encyclia Enthusiasts, Inc., an affiliate of the American Orchid Society.  His work has been published in lay and scholarly journals.  Stewart is now living permanently on Saba where he is preparing a book on the Encyclia species of the Caribbean Basin while creating a scientific map of the location of wild orchids on Saba.  He has already identified 24 species representing nine genera and hopes to track down many more during his ongoing orchid population survey.  In 2005, Chipka launched www.sabaorchidresearch.org, a website dedicated to his program now in place on Saba. 

Learn about Saba's orchids and more at his presentation Saturday, October 20 at 5:30 p.m. @ Tropics.  An additional presentation on haliconias may be added to the program.   Join Stewart for a guided hike Sunday, October 21--time TBA. 

Peter Etnoyer
took a 10 year break from his academic pursuits to follow his other passion: filmmaking.  He is presently a Graduate Research Associate at Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) with a background in biogeography, marine ecology, and spatial information systems. Peter  graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1988, and a Master's degree in Coastal Environmental Management (2001) from Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.  Etnoyer's field research experience began in the Philippine Sulu Sea, and has since taken him to shallow tropical sites throughout the Caribbean, and deep sites in the North Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico using submersibles and ROV's.  Join Peter to learn more about gorgonians (sea fans) and their interesting role on our reefs. 

Presentation is schedule for Monday, October 22, 2007 at 5:30 p.m. at Scout's Place.  Peter will be working with the Saba Bank team the entire week. 

Scott Mori
roots start in the midwest where he was born and and attended universities; but he's all about the tropics now.  After receiving his PhD, Scott taught botany and zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Marshfield from 1969 to 1974 and has been the curator of the Summit Herbarium in Panama (1974-1975) and of the herbarium of the Cocoa Research Center in Bahia, Brazil (1978-1980). He was Director of the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden from 1995-2001 and is currently the Nathaniel Lord Britton Curator of Botany at the same institution. His major research emphasis has been on the taxonomy and ecology of New World tropical rain forest trees. He is an expert on the Brazil nut (Lecythidaceae) family and on the lowland Amazonian flora. Much of his research focuses on the relationships among plants and animals in tropical forests He and his collaborators have published an illustrated Guide to the Vascular Plants of Central French Guiana for which they were awarded the prestigious Engler Medal in Silver for 2002 by the International Association of Plant Taxonomists. He is a co-editor of the Flowering Plants of the Neotropics.  Dr. Mori's associations are numerious:  a former Executive Director of Flora Neotropica, a Fellow of the Explorers Club, a past President of the Torrey Botanical Society and current member of the Council of the Society, and an adjunct professor at the City University of New York, the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation centered at Columbia University, and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Dr. Mori was recently awarded the David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration and the Asa Gray award by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists for life-time achievement in the study of the classification of New World tropical plants.  Scott was one of the leaders in setting up Saba's virtual herbarium, an on going program in cooperation with Conservation International and the New York Botanical Garden.

Join Scott for a rainforest hike the morning of October 25 and begin to understand Saba's flora diversity.  Scott's presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, October 24, 2007 @ 5:30 p.m. @ Tropics.

Sian Morgan
is a graduate student mentoring with the renowned Amanda Vincent and Project Seahorse.  Project Seahorse is an  organization that seeks to advance  marine conservation through protecting seahorses, their relatives and habitats.  Her doctorate research has focused on the juvenile ecology and adult demography of seahorses, using two exploited tropical species as case studies. Her interests include the establishment of marine protected areas in both tropical and temperate zones, connectivity in marine populations, community-based ecosystem management, shifts in marine artisanal fisheries and the international trade in marine products.  Sian's interest in working at the interface between basic biology and conservation policy, has given her the opportunity to coordinate a national seafood choice program for Canada, work with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) to list Syngnathids on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and to undertake research for the CITES secretariat (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora).  Presently studying at the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Canada, Sian will be on Saba in early October. 

Dive with Saba's seahorses and Sian on a field project October 27.  Learn more about this telltale species on the evening of Friday, October 26, 2007--@ The Brigadoon.

Jan den Dulk
Jan was born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada on the shores of Lake Huron.  He obtained his Batchelor of Science degree in Fisheries Biology from the University of Guelph in 1989 and has worked all across Canada for the past 17 years conducting a wide variety of environmental projects.  This work has taken him to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans, the Rocky Mountains, the central prairies, eastern and northern forests and well above the Arctic Circle and tree line.  In August 2006, Jan, his wife Shelley and their dog Zack moved to Saba where he is now the manager of the Saba Conservation Foundation which includes Saba's Marine Park.
Join Jan for as he narrates a recap of the month's events at Sea & Learn on Saba's Grand Finale evening:  Sunday Oct 28  @ 5:30 p.m. @ Tropics Cafe