Carl Safina has been close to the sea all of his life, growing up on Long Island, fishing from childhood, and later studying ecological relationships between seabirds and fish populations, which led to his doctoral dissertation. During his time on the ocean he noticed local declines in sea turtles, white marlin, sharks, tuna, and other fishes. Troubled, he investigated the scientific literature and the records of fishery management agencies. This led him to realize the declines he was observing in the waters off Long Island were happening on a national and indeed global scale. It seemed to him as though a kind of last buffalo hunt was occurring in the seas. Since then, Carl Safina has worked to elevate the public profile of marine and fisheries issues, and labored to put marine fish into the wildlife conservation mainstream.

Safina received his PhD in Ecology from Rutgers University in 1987. Since then, he has been engaged in major efforts to ban high seas driftnets, to overhaul federal fisheries law in the U. S., to use international agreements in restoring depleted populations of tunas, sharks, and other fishes, and to achieve passage of a new high seas fisheries treaty through the United Nations. In 1990 he founded the Living Oceans Program at the National Audubon Society, where he is currently vice president for marine conservation. Safina, born in 1955, is author of more than a hundred scientific and popular publications on ecology and marine conservation. His book, Song for the Blue Ocean, was chosen a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction selection, and a Library Journal Best Science Book selection. Carl Safina is a lecturer at Yale, an elected member of The Explorers Club, a winner of the Pew Charitable Trust's prestigious Scholar's Award in Conservation and the Environment and recipient of a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship.