TEAM DCA

  • Hello, my name is Rylan Lorance, and I am a software engineer and sustainability geek supporting Dear Ocean’s Digital Coral Archive Project. I wanted to devote some extra mental compute power to a philanthropic project, and was drawn to Dear Ocean’s mission. I volunteer my technical skillsets as a data scientist and software engineer: building custom image processing software, managing database infrastructure, and building a bot that automates our upload pipeline. This project has allowed me to connect two passions that aren’t typically connected— wildlife conservation and data. Outside of Dear Ocean, I work at Excarta, a machine learning startup that is paving the way for the next generation of weather modeling. I am also very involved in the SF greentech/bluetech network. When I am not in front of a screen, I am surfing, hiking, or reading.

    My favorite fish is the Giant Porcupine Fish.

  • Hey there,

    I’m Lise, likely the volunteer farthest from Hawaii! My passion for understanding, protecting, and preserving the ocean drives my involvement with Dear Ocean. I'm currently focusing on creating maps that reveal the historical richness of Hawaiian bays, highlighting the significant changes over time and raising awareness of the risks facing the reefs.

    In addition to volunteering, I’m pursuing a PhD in oceanography at the University of Liège in Belgium. My research delves into marine heatwaves in the Southern Ocean, exploring the critical role mesoscale eddies play in their development and dissipation. Prior to my PhD, I earned a Master’s degree in Physics and Oceanography and completed a two-month internship at the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics in Trieste, Italy.

    My favorite fish is the Sailfin Flying Fish.


  • Aloha! I am Sanjay Velappan, and I'm on the board of Dear Ocean with Dr. Christine Zalewski. I have been working with Christine on Dear Ocean ever since she took me out snorkeling in Hawai'i for the first time and I fell in love with everything on the reefs. But I quickly realized this was just a shadow of what our reefs used to be, and this inspired me to begin my work in ocean conservation.

    I received my MBA from UC Berkeley and am currently an Investor with the Berkeley SkyDeck Fund where I lead our investments in both climate tech and enterprise software solutions.

    My favorite fish is the Ornate Butterflyfish.


  • Hello. My name is Matthew Comer. I work for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as a Scientific Aid, working on projects such as endangered species surveys, invasive species management, and habitat restoration. Also I’m attending school at CSU Fullerton. I’m set to earn my Masters in Environmental Studies in 2026.

    I was born with high functioning Asperger’s syndrome. Despite this, I continually seek ways to expand my education and preserve nature for future generations. My specialty is species identification and I have been with the DCA for 2 years now. My hobbies include hiking, bird watching, reading fiction books, movies, and cooking.

    My favorite fish is the Porcupine Fish.

  • Hello Hello! I am Sameer Swarup and I am a data scientist and marine conservationist supporting the Digital Coral Archive (DCA) project at Dear Ocean.

    I have a history of volunteering my statistical and programming skill sets to social impact projects and I am excited to be doing the same for Dear Ocean, particularly in a space that is near and dear to me. I worked in San Francisco as a data scientist at Pfizer and I am currently a MS/PhD student in marine conservation at Duke University. I believe there are substantial data gaps in the marine conservation space that make it difficult for researchers and policymakers to implement solutions like Marine Protected Areas and I am committing my career to addressing this. It is easy to see why I jumped at the chance to join the DCA team. An opportunity to build a comprehensive and universal database of coral reefs that can assist researchers with building temporal and spatial analyses of reefs all around the world will be instrumental in our fight against climate change-induced bleaching events. 

    In my free time, I freedive, scuba, kayak and surf and my favorite fish is the Oceanic Manta Ray :)

  • Aloha,

    I'm Christine, a former research psychologist and current photographer, digital artist, and accidental environmentalist. While starting down a path to study octopus communication, I noticed an accelerated decline in Hawaii's near-shore reefs and began photo-documenting coral colonies over time. One thing led to another until Dear Ocean was founded and the Digital Coral Ark turned from a wish into a reality.

    My favorite fish is the Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse!

PLUS

All of the amazing people who have loved and documented special places under the water for decades and have chosen to share their images with the Digital Coral Ark. Check some of them out on our Contributor Spotlights page!

MAHALO!