Emily Hazelwood
Co-Founder
Emily is a marine conservation biologist and offshore energy consultant. She has a B.A. in Environmental Science from Connecticut College and an M.A.S degree in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Emily was recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the energy sector for her work with Blue Latitudes to develop sustainable, creative, and cost-effective solutions for the environmental issues that surround the offshore energy industry.
Emily has extensive experience as a project manager conducting marine environmental impact assessments and designing and implementing Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) surveys for governmental agencies and private sector clients worldwide. Much of her work is centered around the ecological, socio-economic, regulatory and policy issues surrounding the implementation of Rigs to Reefs programs in the United States and internationally.
Mrs. Hazelwood previously worked on the BP 252 Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This is where she witnessed first hand the destruction and devastation wrought by an oil spill. However, it is also where she learned of a unique silver lining despite the realities of offshore oil and gas development, the Rigs to Reefs program.
Amber Sparks
Co-Founder
Amber is a marine environmental scientist and oil and gas consultant. She has a B.A. in Marine Science from UC Berkeley and a M.A.S in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2018, Amber was recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the energy sector for her work with Blue Latitudes to develop sustainable, creative, and cost-effective solutions for the environmental issues that surround the offshore energy industry.
Amber also has a strong background in technology and public outreach. A former Ocean Curator at Google, she engineered and launched intelligent layers in Google Earth and Google Maps that distill and relate complex concepts in ocean science for a variety of audiences. Today she uses those skills in the oil and gas industry to map fishing activity in proximity to offshore structures and inform decommissioning decisions in relation to commercial fisheries.
Mrs. Sparks specializes in ecological impact assessments, marine biological monitoring and habitat restoration through the lens of the Rigs to Reefs program. Her work is primarily centered around the ecological, economic, and social issues surrounding the implementation of a Rigs-to-Reefs decommissioning option in California and internationally.
Ami Everett
Marine Scientist
Ami is a fisheries biologist and marine scientist who has worked extensively studying the marine life below offshore energy infrastructure. Her work began in the northern Gulf of Mexico tracking fish around oil and gas platforms where she provided habitat use data of commercially important fish species to governmental agencies for future offshore decommissioning plans.
As a Marine Scientist at Blue Latitudes, Ms. Everett’s work is concentrated on technical writing, data management and analysis, and visualizing ocean data through GIS. Currently, her focus is centered around the relationship between humans and the marine environment, through the lens of the Rigs to Reefs program, by evaluating the value of offshore energy infrastructure as fisheries resources.
Throughout her career, Ami has worked over 1000 hours in the field around offshore energy infrastructure conducting acoustic telemetry studies, conventional fish tagging studies, and diver-based reef community surveys, as well as analyzing hundreds of hours of ROV footage collected on energy structures. She received a M.S. in Fisheries from Auburn University and her B.S. in Biology from the University of North Georgia, where she returned to serve as a mentor for students interested in pursuing a career in the field of marine science.
Affiliates
Dr. Mark Benfield, LSU
Mark has over 15 years of experience working with the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico. He has conducted research on plankton and deep-sea marine life on ships and offshore platforms. Through an innovative partnership with BP, Shell, Chevron, Petrobras-America, and Nexen, Mark lead the Gulf SERPENT Project, creating a Gulf-wide deep-sea biological observation network based on deepwater drillships and rigs, which uses industrial ROVs to explore life in the deep sea and expand our understanding of life in the largest and least explored habitat on earth. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Mark worked closely with industry and the government to understand the impacts of the oil spill on zooplankton and deep-sea animals.