Marina Technology Cluster Client Dida Kutz Inducted into The Explorer’s Club
105-year-old organization honors Marina biologist, research diver and writer
Marina, Calif. — The Marina Technology Cluster (MTC) (www.marinatechnologycluster.org) today announced that at their Northern California October 30 meeting, Marina resident and client entrepreneur, research diver and biologist Dida Kutz will be inducted into the Explorers Club, an international society of explorers whose members have included North-Pole explorers Robert Peary and Ootah; South-Pole trekker Roald Amundsen; Mt. Everest conquerors Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzeng Norgay; and moon walkers Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
“This is a profound honor,” said Kutz, who started and maintains BluePlanetDivers.org, a website for research divers of all levels to connect to what is going on within research diving and who serves on the boards of the Point Lobos Association and the Monterey Bay Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. Kutz’s latest conservation effort is outreach and fundraising to save the vaquita, a critically endangered porpoise (www.vivavaquita.org).
Founded in 1904 in New York, the Explorers Club (www.explorers.org) promotes scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space. The international professional society dedicates itself to the advancement of field research and to the ideal that preservation of the human instinct to explore is vital.
“Dida has a long and deep seated interest in exploration,” said Robert J. Higgins, who nominated Kutz for induction into the Explorers Club, “as evidenced by her research-based scuba diving experience with more than 100 data-collection dives in the furthest reaches of the world.”
“She walks the talk,” said Frank Handler, former program chair of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Club and who co-sponsored Kutz’s membership nomination. “Dida has a boundless enthusiasm for the sea and conservation of its natural resources as evidenced by her conceiving of, developing and publishing a website for the international research diving community.”
Learn more…
About the VivaVaquita Project
The vaquita is a small porpoise, and is the only one that occurs in warm waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is found in a tiny area in the extreme northern Gulf of California, in Baja California, Mexico. The vaquita has probably always been rare. But in the last few decades, the small population has plummeted, as gillnets set for fish and shrimp kill more porpoises than are born. The current population is thought to be around 125-150 individuals, and is declining quickly. Unlike some endangered species that have no place left to live in the wild, the vaquita”s home in the Gulf of California is clean and healthy. The only real problem is the gillnets that entangle and kill vaquitas. If these can be moved out of the small area where vaquitas occur, the species will likely recover. We can save the vaquita!!
VivaVaquita
http://www.vivavaquita.org
About the Marina Technology Cluster
Located in the dynamic Monterey Bay Area, the Marina Technology Cluster grows successful businesses by delivering proven, rigorous, business-development services to talented technology-driven entrepreneurs in collaboration with our world-renowned partners, including science, education, government and research institutions.
Website: http://www.marinatechnologycluster.org
Blue Planet Divers
Dida Kutz
Founder
email: didalk@gmail.com
phone: 831-582-9456
Marina Technology Cluster
Susan Barich
Director
email: SBarich@MarinaTechnologyCluster.org
phone: 831-582-9718
Full Disclosure: Dida is a good friend, superb Science Diver and I have a link to her website, Blue Planet Divers on the left-hand sidebar here, right above REEF.
Photo Courtesy of Dida Kutz/All Rights Reserved
