Carl Safina
Key Player

Director, the National Audubon Society’s “Living Oceans” programCarl Safina is a prime example of the interconnectedness of the modern environmental movement. A well-known biologist (and veteran tuna fisherman) from Long Island, Safina is Vice President for Marine Conservation at the National Audubon Society and founder of Audubon’s “Living Oceans” program. As early as 1990, he was telling the mass media that Atlantic swordfish would soon be extinct because they were being caught before reaching reproductive age. “We’re killing babies!” he complained openly in an Audubon fundraising letter, despite government figures showing increasing stocks of swordfish worldwide. So why is an Audubon Society bigwig flacking for SeaWeb, a relative unknown in enviro-warfare? Follow the money. Safina’s organization, like those of the rest of SeaWeb’s “spokesteam,” gets millions of dollars from well-heeled philanthropies like the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Packard Foundation – both of whom are SeaWeb’s primary funders as well.