Laura Barnes Walker

LAURA BARNES WALKER is Education Coordinator for O’Neill Sea Odyssey, which provides hands on educational experience for young students, encouraging them to protect and preserve our marine environment. The program takes 4th through 6th grade kids out on Monterey Bay in a catamaran. The students do a three-station program of Marine biology, marine ecology and navigation, which serves as an introduction to marine science for these kids. Most have never been on a boat before. Laura teaches on the boat, all three stations. She also writes and researches all the curriculum, manages grants, schedules teachers, pays for buses out of Sea Odyssey’s scholarship fund, mops up, scrubs life jackets, and makes visual aids.

Laura was born in Santa Barbara, CA and grew up there. Her dad worked on the water, so Laura grew up on boats. Her first job was getting her allowance from scrubbing the bottom of her dad’s boat.

Laura studied humanities at San Francisco State University, because she wanted a really well rounded education. However the ocean life continued to call. Immediately after graduating, she worked for the Maritime Museum Association in San Francisco. Then she got offered a job sail making for the America’s Cup.

But Laura really wanted to travel, though she didn’t have the necessary funding. So she got a job as a tour guide in Alaska. There she spent a couple of years working for land-based eco-tours, like camping tours, and also worked on Prince William Sound as a naturalist on a glacier and wildlife day-tour charter boat.

Upon returning to California, a friend suggested Santa Cruz as an antidote to big city life, which would have been hard after the wilderness of Alaska. Once settled, Laura went to the harbor to look for a job. She approached Save Our Shores, as she wanted to do something good for the environment. During her time in Alaska Laura was sometimes shocked by the lack of environmental awareness she often observed.

Save Our Shores (SOS) didn’t have any jobs, but they had a Sanctuary Stewardship Program, which included 100 hours of training about the ecology of Monterey Bay. Laura completed the ten-week course, plus 100 hours of community service public outreach.

Near the end of that program, SOS told her O’Neill was looking for someone with boat experience who had worked as a naturalist. Laura was hired and started as an Instructor in the Sea Odyssey program in 1999. A few years later she was asked if she’d like the Education Coordinator position to write their curriculum as a book.  Laura said yes and has been at O’Neill Sea Odyssey ever since.