The Safina Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

conservation Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws. Conservation may also refer to: Environment and natural resources * Nature conservation, the protection and manageme ...

and environmental organization headquartered in

Setauket, New York Setauket is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County, New York, United States, on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the 2010 United States census The United States census of 2010 was the twe ...

as part of Stony Brook University. It was founded in 2003 as the Blue Ocean Institute and later renamed in honor of the founder,

Carl Safina Carl Safina (born May 23, 1955) is an American ecologist and author of books and other writings about the human relationship with the natural world. His books include ''Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achiev ...

History

The Safina Center was founded in 2003 by Dr.

, (PhD in

Ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

from

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

), a MacArthur fellow and inaugural holder of the Endowed Chair for Nature and Humanity at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

. Its original focus was ocean science and policy, primarily

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

and

fisheries Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life; or more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place ( a.k.a. fishing ground). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farms, both ...

. Subsequently, their focus widened as climate-related issues such as

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

and

ocean acidification Ocean acidification is the reduction in the pH value of the Earth’s ocean. Between 1751 and 2021, the average pH value of the ocean surface has decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14. The root cause of ocean acidification is carbon dioxid ...

made it necessary to address the global influence of

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...

food production The food industry is a complex, global network of diverse businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. The food industry today has become highly diversified, with manufacturing ranging from small, traditional, ...

material culture Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...

and the expanding human footprint on not just the ocean but on the living world generally. The Safina Center began wide exploration and interpretation of how humans are changing the living world, and what those changes mean for life-supporting systems, living nature, and people.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Safina Center Environmental organizations based in New York (state) Stony Brook University