Ty Carlisle
Co-Director of Shifting Baselines

A graduate of the University of Southern California School for Visual Anthropology, Ty was trained to venture into the harshest of environments in order to make films. He needed all that and more to venture into the world of environmental filmmaking.

Ty is the producer of over 20 various environmental Short films and National Commercials for the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, including “Shifting Baselines in the Surf”, which was an official selection of the Santa Barbara Ocean Film Festival, the Inspiration Film Festival, and LOHAS 2005.  Ty also produced the nationally acclaimed feature-length political documentary Flock of Dodos: the Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus, which was an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival, the Maui Film Festival, and DocNZ Film Festival, among others.

Ty grew up in the American heartland of small-town Illinois, and never saw the Ocean until he was 18.  Ty is proof that the term “Shifting Baselines” goes beyond its original Marine Biology meaning.  “Since I started working with Randy Olson as an intern years ago, I’ve seen the term ‘Shifting Baselines’ evolve into everyday language.  It’s used everywhere from politics to sports.” 

Ty has called Los Angeles home for the last 7 years, and enjoys golfing and boogie boarding (though he still hasn’t figured out how to surf).  Feel free to visit him on myspace at www.myspace.com/tycarlisle

Ryan Cummins
Co-Director of Shifting Baselines

Ryan Cummins is a music video and commercial director living in Los Angeles. While filming a short documentary at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Hawaii, Ryan met up with some old friends from Stanford University, who had since become budding successes in the world of Marine Biology. Ryan reveals "it was during this visit with them, in listening to their stories and seeing how passionate they were about their research, that I not only remembered the Ocean existed, but started to contextualize just how serious an impact our growth of human population has had on this unexplored underwater world. It  was hard not to feel compelled towards action. It also didn't hurt to hear their additional exploits of scuba diving, snorkeling, surfing and even swimming with sharks. " Following that experience, Ryan got in touch with Randy Olson, the founder of Shifting Baselines, and in short time he conceived the idea for SB's next national PSA surrounding the idea of Coral Reef Stress, set to shoot in the fall of 2006.

During his summer breaks in between earning an Economics degree, Ryan got his start in Hollywood working for Columbia Picture's Chairman Amy Pascal, Sid Ganis, as well as the acclaimed director Spike Jonze. When he was asked to organize Spike's own entire video collection, Ryan admits he promptly established an unpublicized "Intern Library" so that he would have the ability to "check out" any and all of the works each night to study them obsessively before their prompt return the next day.  It was then that he found the joy potential in directing. After graduating, Ryan paid his dues as a production assistant on multiple feature films before committing to directing his own projects full time. He is now repped by Anonymous Content. , nibh.

Dr. Randy Olson
Prairie Starfish Productions and University of Southern California
Filmmaker, former marine biologist
Director of the Shifting Baselines Campaign

"I enjoyed being a marine biologist so much in the 1980's that I began making silly short films about how to eat a "lobstah," the sex life of barnacles, and fish mating. I went to film school at U.S.C. to make more silly films. But then a sad thing happened. I began hearing from my old marine biology colleagues about the declining state of the oceans."

Dr. Jeremy Jackson
Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Coral Reef Ecologist

"Every ecosystem I studied is unrecognizably different from when I started. I have a son who is 30, and I used to take him snorkeling on the reefs in Jamaica to show him all the beautiful corals there. I have a daughter who is 17 -- I can't show her anything but heaps of seaweed."

Gale Anne Hurd
Valhalla Motion Pictures
Producer of Hollywood Movies ("Terminator," "Aliens," "The Abyss," "The Hulk")

"After producing THE ABYSS, I became an avid scuba diver. I spent several years diving the initially pristine reefs of Micronesia, some of the most diverse marine ecosystems on the planet. With the promise of a fast profit, subsistence fishing in many areas has given way to more destructive practices, such as dynamiting reefs. The consequences? Destroyed reefs resulting in complete and sometimes permanent habitat loss. This is a serious problem throughout Micronesia, Indonesia and the Philippines. It's truly heartbreaking."

Dr. Paul Dayton
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Kelp Forest Ecologist

"I've studied the kelp beds around San Diego all my professional career. At first, the changes happened rather slowly as the big fish that escaped gill nets disappeared. I began to make dives and think to myself, "What's different here, this place seems less crowded." Then the invertebrates like abalone and scallops went. Then the live fishery took the smaller fish like sheephead, cabezon, and even moray eels and horn sharks. Now it's like a ghost town -- lots of structure, but nobody home."

Dr. Steven Miller
University of North Carolina, Wilmington and Aquarius Undersea Habitat
Coral Reef Ecologist

"Caribbean coral reefs of the 1970s changed my life. But the reefs I first knew and loved are gone, casualties of disease, coral bleaching, and overfishing. The reefs I study now in Florida are only a shadow of their former glory. My tourist friends go snorkeling and marvel at the colors and structure, but little do they know they're looking at the ghost of a coral reef. While I can tell my friends about all that we have lost, I am saddened that my children can't have the same personal experience I had, just 25 years ago."

Jason Ensler
Director of NBC movies, "Three's Company: Behind the Camera" and "Martha, Inc."

"I went to film school with Randy Olson and I like fish. I've eaten fish my whole life. Even when I was a child, I would forego ice cream to eat more fish. But I also like to look at them. Fish are pretty. One day, Randy and I were sitting in my living room and he told me we were running out of fish. I said, "Who?" He said, "We. Capital We." So, we came up with a plan to save the fish and the world that they live in. Because the world they live in, is the world We live in. And if we run out of fish, there won't be anything left to eat except jellyfish and ice cream."