Cathy’s lifelong romance with our Ocean began on Virginia’s southern Chesapeake Bay. Since 1976, armed with a B.S. in Biology and M.Ed. in Science (GSU – Armstrong Campus, Savannah, GA) Cathy served as a naturalist/guide for Wilderness Southeast. She also produces, writes, hosts and narrates television documentaries and her works include two Emmy-winning nature series for GPB-TV called Coastal Naturalist and Secret Seashores, of the human and natural history of Georgia’s barrier island archipelago. For three seasons she hosted and served as consulting naturalist for a multiple Telly award-winning nature series for Turner South entitled The Natural South. Most recently she co-produced Shifting Baselines that aired on GPB-TV in November 2019. Concomitantly for 15 years beginning in October 1998, Cathy worked with NOAA Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary serving as ocean science educator/translator, scientific diver, and certified pilot of the submersible DeepWorker 2000 as well as an Aquanaut. Since officially retiring from NOAA in 2014, Cathy serves locally on behalf of our great global Ocean through stewardship and advocacy with several organizations including Ocean Exchange and Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, and Tybee Island Marine Science Foundation. She also helped establish Maudlin Pond Press, LLC in 2020. Cathy serves as naturalist for SCAD’s Sustainable Design Department’s Biomimicry Class and in her spare time is the lead singer for a local band called The World Famous Crabettes. She still leads trips into the Okefenokee Swamp and other great wilderness areas in SE USA.
Through a naturalist's eye, Swamp Goddess introduces armchair adventurers to the incredible wonders of the incomparable Okefenokee Swamp, a vast natural wilderness in southeast Georgia. Humorous antics of brave souls who join the author on overnight expeditions reveal the indomitable adventurous human spirit even in the face of virulent weather, unpredictable fauna and insectivorous plants.
Through The Adventures of Leslie Binnacle the Barnacle, the story of Leslie and friends helps us understand the complexities of life large and teeny in our Great Big Global Ocean. Additionally, Leslie teaches us the true value of companionship, of caring for each other, and of taking responsibility for others and our Ocean. Through Leslie we learn that acorn barnacles are hermaphroditic and that they mate to produce thousands of free-swimming larvae that go through several stages before making it to their end form as a sessile adult. We learn that those millions of barnacle larva have a critically important role near the base of the food pyramid. We learn how difficult it is for a larva barnacle to even make it to adulthood. And then, when a sessile, firmly attached adult, the encrusting barnacle that is the bane of so many ship and boat owners, we learn that life's perils just begin. Through Leslie and friends, we learn that even the least among us can do our part to care for Planet Earth's greatest feature, Our Ocean. We hope you will enjoy learning about our Great Global Ocean through the adventures of Leslie and her friends.
