GIVING HIS ALL: 



VDILAND 

 SHIFTS FDCUS 

 TD N □ RTH 

 CAROLINA 



By Katie Mdsher 



- * 



" it?** ■ m 



I WAS IMPRESSED WITH 

 HOW MUCH CREDIT AND RESPECT 



ALL PARTIES 



PUBLIC AND 



PRIVATE 



CLEARLY GIVE T □ 



North Carolina Sea Grant." 



As a youth in suburban Long Island, Michael Voiland was pulled to 

 Brooklyn — home of his beloved Dodgers and his large extended family. 



But at age 14, his parents bought a cottage in Riverhead, on Long Island's 

 eastern end. A friend invited him to go fishing there. "This was foreign to me," 

 he explains. "I figured Long Island Sound was pretty much a 'dead sea.'" 



Within a few castings, Voiland had caught a striped bass along 

 the sound's shoreline. "I was awed by what I saw," he recalls. "It was my 

 environmental epiphany." 



While he didn't give up on baseball or family gatherings, he did begin 

 spending more and more time exploring the nooks and crannies around the 

 sound. Those adventures would lead to college, graduate studies and three 

 decades of conserving natural resources across New York State. 



Voiland's learning adventures now are focused on North Carolina's 

 coastal waters — and communities that depend on those waters. On July 1, he 

 became North Carolina Sea Grant's new executive director. 



Longtime friend Jim Murray says that much like a 14-year-old exploring 

 Long Island, the Michael Voiland of today will focus intensely on learning 

 everything he can about North Carolina's coastal issues and resources — and 

 he will be a quick study. 



left td right: michael vdiland joins ronald slzemore and 

 Spencer Rogers on a tour at the University of North Carolina 

 at Wilmington's Center fdr Marine Science. • Voiland talks 

 with lundie spence at a meeting of the center for dcean 

 Sciences Education Excellence - Southeast. • Voiland used the 

 E/V Ontario during his extension programs on the Great Lakes. 



"He will give 1 10 percent," explains Murray, former extension director for 

 North Carolina Sea Grant and now acting deputy director of the National Sea 

 Grant College Program. 



"I am absolutely confident — based on his 30-plus-year track record 

 — he will dedicate himself to making North Carolina Sea Grant as good as it 

 possibly can be," adds Murray. 



Down on the Docks 



True to his nature, Voiland dove into his undergraduate studies at the 

 State University of New York at Albany. "I took every course that related to 

 geography, cartography and biological resources," he recalls. 



He stayed in Albany for a master's degree in geography, and then moved 

 to the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse 



14 Coastwatch I Autumn 2006 I www.ncseagrant.org 



