Jack Rudloe

(http://www.minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/08/03/oil-spill-ark/)

Jack Rudloe is a very inspirational person who has been fascinated with animals and their environments all his life. Over the past 35 years, Jack has done his best to conserve the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem. I feel that after reading this report, you will want to help save sea life in a neglected bay somewhere in the world.

Rudloe was born in New York City in 1943. In his childhood, he was fascinated by animals and their environments. At nine years old, he began his career working with animals by appearing on New York television with a live alligator. At 14, he moved to the Florida panhandle and learned to fish and hunt in coasts and swamps.

Exxon Protest (http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/134069)

His main influence was John Steinbeck, whom he met at 20 years old in New York City. He brought Steinbeck a rock with a type of coral called a sea fan, and they examined it together. Jack was extremely surprised that Steinbeck, a writer, exceeded the knowledge of a marine biologist. This influence inspired Jack to become a writer.

In the late 1980s, Jack began to work around places affected by oil spills and began his first protest over the Exxon spill in Alaska. In 1989, Jack cut his Exxon credit card in half and put it in a plastic bag filled with oil in a protest against the spill that the Exxon Valdez tanker created after it grounded on a reef and spilled an estimated 32 million gallons of crude oil into pristine Alaskan waters. When the Gulf of Mexico oil spill occurred, Jack and a couple of other marine biologists created a nonprofit organization called “Noah’s Ark,” whose objective was to take as many of the different species of animals that helped run the gulf waters ecosystem and keep them in captivity. Jack and the other biologists believe that if all the little droplets of oil that are still deep in the Gulf come washing back into the bay in the wrong hurricane, it would kill a good amount of the animals that are still recovering from the beginning of the oil spill. After the oil is cleaned up, the biologists could start releasing the animals that they have in captivity back into the water. Jack has a four-acre facility an hour south of Tallahassee, Florida. There he houses more than 350 different species of animals that live in the Gulf of Mexico, everything from sharks to starfish.

Later in his life, Rudloe took up writing and published The Sea Brings Forth, The Erotic Ocean, The Living Dock, Time of the Turtle, The Wilderness coast, and Search for the Great Turtle Mother. Today his main occupation is helping in the conservation of the most endangered species of sea turtle, Kemp’s Ridley.

Rudloe definitely gave back to his community by running a nonprofit organization to help sea life ecosystems in Florida after natural and man-made disasters. After his act of helping all the sea life, he definitely inspired a lot of people with his selflessness and generosity. I think that in the future, if there is ever another oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we will definitely be able to keep another oil spill under control, thanks to Jack.

Kemps Ridley (http://www.theurbn.com/2010/08/jack-rudloes-operation-noahs-ark/)

He inspires me because of his willingness to go on with a nonprofit organization to help sea life caught in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. I am inspired to emulate the perseverance and determination that drives him to do such good deeds. It is amazing that after all that he has accomplished, he truly does not expect a prize for helping the sea life caught in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He has proved to me that that he has excellent character and moral integrity to go beyond himself to help a greater cause. He is my hero.