Southern California Abalone Restoration

Capt. Nancy L. Caruso: Marine Biologist

Special Trips Naturalist

Captain Nancy L Caruso

Founder: Get Inspired!

Nancy is a Virginia native with a B.S in Marine Biology with an emphasis in aquaculture and chemistry. Early in her career, Nancy worked in the aquaculture industry and for a local public aquarium. Wanting to do more conservation work within her community, Nancy left the aquarium to build a program to restore Orange County, California’s decimated kelp forests. With help from magazine and newspaper articles, as well a television and radio, Nancy has helped to bring the message of the importance of kelp forests along our coast to millions.

The Orange County Ocean Restoration Project has taught 5000 students how to grow giant kelp in their classrooms that was planted in the ocean by 250 trained volunteers and now there are giant kelp forests in areas that had been barren for more than 25 years.

To continue her work, Nancy started a nonprofit organization called Get Inspired!  She continues to restore the kelp forest ecosystem by teaching kids to grow white seabass and green abalone in their classrooms which are released to their ocean habitats in the restored kelp forests.  Get Inspired! is dedicated to Inspiring stewardship and curiosity for the natural world through the exploration of science. After completing a 15 month pilot project to use large adult abalone as a technique for restoring green abalone populations along our coast, Nancy has just begun a massive 10 year project to restore them with the help of public aquaria, museums, and 6,000 southern California students in their classrooms.  This project will educate millions of people about how, in one human lifetime, we nearly ate the abalone to extinction and how we can all work together to bring them back.