[Coral-List] The passing or one of the coral greats

[Melanie McField - HRI]

I too am so saddened to hear of John Ogden's passing.  John was one of my
great mentors - in grad school at USF and afterwards.  I actually met him
in1991 as he was rounding up support for the new CARICOMP monitoring
program while I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Belize. He championed
collaboration and long-term monitoring - which I have tried to keep at our
core in Healthy Reefs for Healthy People. He was also responsible for
getting the first funding for what was initially called the ISRS Sollins
Coral Reef Ecosystem Fellowship in 1996 - which enabled my PhD research.
John also helped consolidate the Summit Foundation's commitment to the
Mesoamerican reef around 2000 which has enabled so much amazing reef
conservation over more than two decades. Our reef and many of us who worked
with him are forever grateful and blessed to have had the opportunity to
call him a mentor, colleague and a friend. He leaves us too soon. My
condolences to his wife Nancy, his family and other friends.

Melanie

On Mon, Jul 3, 2023 at 8:34 AM Eugene Shinn via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

>       The coral reef research community and conservationists have lost
> one of its Greats. Dr. John C. Ogden left us at 11:10 PM June 25. He was
> only 82 when he passed following complications from a hip operation.
> John received his PhD from Stanford University under the famous
> Population Bomb author, Paul R. Ehrlich. Although John began as bird
> Specialist, he headed to Panama for a post doc with the Smithsonian
> Tropical Research Institute where he studied parrotfish. That led him to
> the West Indies Lab on St. Croix in 1971 where he became resident marine
> biologist and later the director. He was also Original Director of the
> NOAA HYDROLAB facility and became an aquanaut. John was an early leader
> in the developing field of behavioral ecology and initiated
> Caribbean-wide Seagrass Ecosystem studies.
>
> He moved to St. Petersburg, Florida as director of the Florida Institute
> of Oceanography where he added the Keys Marine Lab to FIO facilities. He
> worked tirelessly to help get the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
> established in 1990. John published over 70 papers, contributed to
> numerous books and produced several television programs about tropical
> ecosystems. He worked on policy and research relating to the
> conservation of coral reefs and tropical ecosystems with NSF, NOAA, U. S
> Dept of State, the World Bank, UNESCO, WWF, and private Foundations.
> Anyone involved with coral reef research will know he is responsible for
> much, much more. When he served on numerous coral reef committees in the
> Florida Keys he always brought up the most important subjects. John will
> be greatly missed by the coral reef research community world-wide. Gene
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