Thanks for your Support at the 2021 Living Shorelines Workshop
By Daniel Hayden
After two years of planning, promoting, and a good bit of maneuvering due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I’m proud to say the 2021 Living Shorelines Workshop was a huge success.
This year’s event set record numbers:
- 300 attendees joined us both virtually and in Cape May
- 22 sponsors provided financial and technical support
- 32 dedicated speakers generously gave their time and expertise to ensure our robust agenda was the strongest it’s ever been
- 7 individual and 3 classroom scholarships for students and young professionals
In August, as the Delta Variant of Covid-19 surged across the country, we made a switch to offer a hybrid option for attendance. At the time, we were uncertain how this might affect the workshop experience or people’s interest. What we got instead was an influx of support from our sponsors, speakers, and attendees, who appreciated choosing between an in-person or virtual format.
We were also able to extend the reach of the Workshop by making it accessible to students, young professionals, and other members of our community who did not have the means, time, or other limiting factors to travel to Cape May. Thanks to support from the Island Foundation, registration and some travel expenses were covered for seven individuals and three classrooms to join us.
These workshops are a huge effort for the community, and I am incredibly grateful for your support and patience. I want to personally thank our lead sponsor, Orsted, and executive sponsor, NOAA.
Additionally, I want to recognize our cohosts: The American Littoral Society, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the Chesapeake Bay and New Jersey Field Offices of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Without your support and help curating the agenda, planning the field trips, and managing logistics, this workshop would not have been so impactful.
Last, but not least, our speakers deserve a huge round of applause. A tech-transfer workshop is only as valuable as its content, and I truly believe we were blessed with some of the best and brightest minds in coastal restoration. The knowledge sharing at the 2021 Workshop was second-to-none and we have you to thank for donating your time and energy to sharing your individual research and experiences. Thank you as well to workshop steering committee who helped assemble such a thoughtful, and dedicated group of panelists.
We have released some content from the workshop, including posters, a few recordings, and select presentations. If you were unable to join us this year, we hope this serves as a taste of what you can expect at the 2022 RAE Summit in New Orleans as well as the 2023 Living Shorelines Workshop. We can’t wait to see you there!
Best Regards,
Daniel Hayden
President & CEO
Restore America’s Estuaries