Editor’s Note: Connections

Editor’s Note: Connections

Living here never ceases to amaze me. Not only does the East Bay have the best weather on the planet and unrivaled beauty, it is also full of amazing people doing incredibly cool work and making important contributions to their fields. You never know when there may be a local connection.

For instance, remarkable footage of the elusive Humboldt squid filmed in the Pacific Ocean near Chile for the BBC’s Blue Planet II documentary series has a local angle. Alameda’s DOER Marine Operations gets serious props for mounting a super powerful underwater camera in the two-person submersible that captured film of the creature. DOER was founded by Sylvia A. Earle in the 1990s, an internationally famous oceanographer whose daughter, Liz Taylor, now runs the sea exploration company from Alameda Point. Taylor convinced Canon she needed one of the high-tech cameras to photograph bioluminescence in bamboo coral off the coast of Hawaii at a depth of 1,000 feet. Way cool.

Today, DOER, a leader in developing technology for deep-sea exploration, does projects for clients unlocking the mysteries of the sea. While Taylor prefers to do good work that saves the sea, she is game for jobs that simply do no harm to the ocean as long as their goals align.

Taylor, an Oakland hills resident, has big dreams for the future, including using DOER as a primary impetus for renewed maritime activity at Alameda Point where she one day wants to upend ocean exploration with a fleet of little submarines that will be accessible to ultimately anyone and everybody. Read more about this interesting company in “Saving the Sea,” page 22.

We also profile Cooper Teare, a former Saint Joseph Pilot now a sophomore as a University of Oregon Duck. He experienced a meteoric high school running career — one of the fastest high school distance runners in California history — and has an eye on the Olympics. He is a specialist in distances ranging from the mile to the 5000-meter distance, and his former coaches think he may make history. Teare has been noticed by Track and Field News, USA Today, and Mile-Split.com. Keith Gleason writes about the athlete’s career in “The Cooper Effect,” page 28. Maybe you’ll be inspired to try spikes.