SeaWeb Fellows

John Weller

John B. Weller is a nature photographer and writer based in Boulder, Colorado. He was trained in economics and philosophy at Stanford University. His work has been shown in prestigious museums and galleries, is part of private and corporate collections across the country and has been acclaimed as “photography approaching the best of modern art.” His recognition includes the 2005 Galen Rowell Tribute Photography Award.

Weller’s highly acclaimed first book of photography and essays, Great Sand Dunes National Park: Between Light and Shadow, was published in 2004 and has vaulted Weller into the upper echelons of creative nature photographers. Written and photographed over three years of monthly solo wilderness backpacking treks into the far reaches of the new Great Sand Dunes National Park, the book has won national and international attention, including the 2004 Best Book Mountain Image Award at the Banff Book Festival.

Past Fellows

Mark Spalding

Mark J. Spalding is currently President of the Ocean Foundation, Executive Director of Fundación Bahía de Loreto, and Senior Program Officer with the Alaska Oceans Program. His research interests relate to marine conservation including protected areas, and trade and the environment. His current research projects include the protection of marine mammals and conservation of their habitat on the west coast of North America; reduction of ocean noise pollution; establishment of new marine protected areas in the Sea of Cortez; and the protection of North Pacific Ocean habitat by prohibiting destructive bottom trawling. From 1995 to 2000, he coordinated a multinational effort to save Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California Sur, the last pristine birthplace of the Pacific Gray Whale. Through the end of the Clinton Administration he was a member of a Presidential and Congressional Advisory Committee on U.S.-Mexico environmental border relations, the Good Neighbor Environmental Board. He is chair emeritus of the National Board of Directors of the Surfrider Foundation and Chair of the Board of Directors of Pro Peninsula and One Earth One Justice. He is also the former Executive Director of the San Diego Foundation's Orca Fund and is the Chair of the Council of the National Whale Conservation Fund.

Spalding is the former Director of the Environmental Law and Civil Society Program, and Editor of the Journal of Environment and Development, at the Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies (IR/PS), University of California at San Diego. In addition to lecturing at IR/PS, he has taught at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD's Muir College, UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, and University of San Diego's School of Law. Spalding, who has been practicing law and acting as a policy consultant for 18 years, was the chair of the environmental law section of the California State Bar Association from 1998-1999. He holds a B.A. in history with Honors from Claremont McKenna College, a J.D. from Loyola Law School, and a Master in Pacific International Affairs (MPIA) from IR/PS.

During 2003 and 2004, Spalding was a Sustainability Institute, Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow where he worked on applying systems analysis to federal fisheries management problems, and in 2004 he served as the first SeaWeb Senior Fellow, where his project focused on the viability of a large scale corporate markets campaign for four major seafood species. He was a research fellow at UCSD's Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies in 1998 where he studied Mexican protected areas management.