About Sandy Macfarlane, Coastal Sustainability Author
Sandy Macfarlane has lived her entire life by the sea. Like many kids, she grew up loving the water and her curiosity about all things marine, begun in youth, continues. Aided by forty years of hands-on experience in resource evaluation, policy and management and decades of recreational rowing in a 14-foot Cape Dory sailboat she used as a rowing skiff, she learned about the biological and physical world around her. In the process, she also gained insight into the social, political and economic landscape of coastal communities. She is past-president of the New England Estuarine Research Society and a member of numerous professional societies and community outreach organizations. Swirling Currents is her third book.
After graduating from the University of Massachusetts, she settled in the Cape town of Orleans where she began her professional career as shellfish biologist for the Town of Orleans. Later, she was appointed as the town’s first conservation administrator. Sandy retired from town government in 1998, was awarded a master’s degree in resource management from Antioch New England Graduate School and founded Coastal Resource Specialists, a consulting company devoted to shellfish, coastal and watershed issues.