J. R. Schubel has worked throughout his career at the interfaces of coastal science-management-policy. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, where he became associate director of its Chesapeake Bay Institute. He has published widely on the Chesapeake Bay and wrote and illustrated The Living Chesapeake. He left Johns Hopkins to become dean of Stony Brook University's Marine Sciences Research Center. For three of his twenty years at Stony Brook, he served as provost. He holds the title of Stony Brook distinguished service professor emeritus. He is president emeritus of the New England Aquarium and the Aquarium of the Pacific.