Four awards were announced at Dauphin Island Sea Lab's (DISL) annual Marine Environmental Awards Luncheon on Oct. 30 to recognize individuals or organizations for their contributions to marine environmental sustainability.

Chris Blankenship, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, received the Sessions-Brown Conservation Leadership award after working in conservation since 2017.

Mimi Fearn was awarded the Gulf Coast Marine Environmental Excellence Award after being involved in environmental groups like Dog River Clearwater Revival (DRCR) and Alabama Water Watch (AWW). She is retired but still works as an AWW trainer and as DRCR's water monitoring coordinator.

Dauphin Island Bird Sanctuaries (DIBS) was awarded the Gulf Coast Marine Environmental Leadership Award for maintaining their mission to preserve habitat for birds on Dauphin Island. DIBS works with the support of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and other donors.

John Valentine was announced as the 2024 recipient of the Wes Tunnell Lifetime Recognition Gulf Science and Conservation Award for his contributions to coastal research.

According to a press release on the awards, Valentine pushed to create the Alabama Center of Excellence, which manages projects involved with human interactions with the flora and fauna of the Gulf ecosystem. He did this with RESTORE Act funds after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

"His advocacy for the federal RESTORE Act, which has steered billions of dollars to the Gulf States for ecosystem restoration and science, following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and his desire to make sure we are never caught that unprepared," Sean Powers, director of the USA School of Marine & Environmental Sciences, said in the press release, "it was a wake-up call for all of us, and John was one of the first to get up and go to work when the alarm went off."

Valentine has a lab named after him at DISL that examines the influence of controlling energy flow within and between marine habitats, with an emphasis on vegetated habitats. The research done in his lab is being conducted in a variety of locations from Mobile to the northern Florida Keys.

In December, Valentine will receive his award at the Gulf Estuarine Research Society's (GERS) biennial meeting, which is hosted by the University of South Alabama.

The keynote speaker for the event was Larry Madin, deputy director emeritus of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Madin was among the first biologists to use scuba diving and submersibles to study oceanic animals in their original locations.