John Tanacredi
John T. Tanacredi, Ph.D. is Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the Biology, Chemistry and Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Environmental Research and Coastal Oceans Monitoring (CERCOM) facility, at Molloy University, Rockville Centre, New York. He is a former Research Associate at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York, Aquarium for Wildlife Conservation Osborn Laboratories of Marine Science; visiting scientist at The American Museum of Natural History in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology; Research Associate at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, and former chair of the Conservation Committee of the Explorers Club. He was a Supervisory Research Ecologist for 26 years in the National Park Service, serving as Chief of the Division of Natural Resources at Gateway NRA, and as one of the NPS’s Coastal Natural Resource Specialists duty stationed for 9 years at the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, R.I. From 1974-1978 he was duty stationed on Governors Island, NYC as an Environmental Analyst for the U.S. Coast Guard Bridge Administration preparing NEPA environmental impact statements for bridge and highway construction in six eastern US states.
From 1968 to 1970 he was a U.S. Navy Flight Meteorologist “Hurricane Hunter”, Stationed at Naval Air Base, JAX, in Jacksonville Florida. Dr. Tanacredi received his doctorate in Environmental Health Engineering, from The Polytechnic University, today NYU Tanden School of Engineering (1988), a HEW Scholarship for an M.S. degree in Environmental Health Sciences from Hunter College, Institute of Health Sciences, CUNY (1974) and a BS in Biological Sciences from Richmond College, CUNY (1972).
Dr. Tanacredi has continued his Long Island Molloy University Horseshoe Crab Habitat Inventory of some 115 locations tracking Horseshoe Crab breeding conditions and habitat. He has led many international academic travel programs including Earth and Environmental Sciences Department programs to Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands in July 2011 & 2018; Iceland/Italy in 2012; Sicily, May 2014 Easter Island, 2017 and Sasebo, Japan in 2015.
Dr. Tanacredi is one of the founding members of the IUCN-SSG (International Union for the Conservation of Nature - Scientific Specialists Group for Horseshoe Crabs) and principal coordinator of several International Conferences on Horseshoe Crab Conservation and Biology. As Dr. Sylvia Earle had recently coined, “he continues as the Horseshoe Crab Whisperer” fostering conservation of all Horseshoe Crabs species and their habitat on a global scale.
His presentations have been before a myriad of interested audiences. His topics range from coastal environmental issues to conservation ecology. He has published over 60 peer reviewed research publications, written, and edited 6 books. He has been included and interviewed in the BBC series first show “How to Grow a Planet”; NPR’s “Science Friday”; Nat Geo Wild show “Alien Crabs”; The New Yorker Magazine article “True Blue Bloods”; NY Times, Newsday, NY Post, The Huffington Post, and the Village Voice. He is a consistent Hutton House Lecturer at Long Island University. He has been interviewed on ABC Eyewitness News; NBC News 4 NY.; News 12 Long Island; and CBS 10/55 WLINY, over the years on a variety of environmental and ecological topics from birds and aircraft, West Nile virus and mosquitos, ecotoxicology and ecosystems health, World Heritage Site designation and always on Horseshoe Crab conservation and biology.
His book, The Conservation and Biology of the Horseshoe Crab; Springer, 2009 was one of the initiating factors in conducting the four Asian Horseshoe Crab Conferences from Hong Kong in 2011 to Japan in 2015; China in 2019 and the 2024 Singapore Conference. His latest book, “The Redesigned Earth: An Introduction to Ecology for Engineers as if the Earth Really Mattered” (2019), by Springer- Nature, has received rave reviews.