About

Dr. Kathryn Mengerink, Senior Attorney and Co-Director of the Ocean Program at the Environmental Law Institute. She has led ELI’s Ocean Program since founding it in 2006. Under her leadership, the Ocean Program has launched law and policy projects related to regional ocean management, fisheries management and enforcement, aquaculture, ocean and coastal restoration, offshore energy development, marine protection, and more. Her work focuses on supporting healthy oceans by working with communities, scientists, policy-makers, and other stakeholders to improve laws and policies, and their implementation. She regularly convenes and facilitates working groups, panels, and meetings. She has led a number of projects, including evaluating the legal ramifications of, opportunities for, and obstacles to coastal and marine spatial planning; supporting implementation of ocean and coastal ecosystem-based management through rigorous analysis of relevant laws and policies; conducting 23-state assessment of state and local authority for marine protection, supporting the role of subsistence communities in ocean management in the U.S. Arctic; and examining the legal framework for deep ocean stewardship, among others. Based at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), Dr. Mengerink regularly interacts and engages with the ocean science community. In addition to her role at ELI, she is a Lecturer and Academic Coordinator at SIO, where she teaches ocean law and policy, deep sea policy, and runs a 9-week graduate summer course on marine biodiversity, conservation and global change. Dr. Mengerink holds a B.S. in Zoology (Texas A&M University), Ph.D. in Marine Biology from SIO (UC San Diego) and a J.D. with a certificate of specialization in environmental law from Boalt Hall, School of Law (UC Berkeley).