[Coral-List] The passing or one of the coral greats
Eugene Shinn
eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu
Sun Jul 2 20:57:52 UTC 2023
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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