Anne Rudloe


Anne Rudloe was an American marine biologist. She was the co-founder of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Panacea, Florida.

Biography

Rudloe was born Anne Eidemiller, December 24, 1947, in Troy, Ohio, and grew up in Hampton, Virginia. In 1971, she married writer and naturalist Jack Rudloe.
She earned a BSc at Mary Washington College in 1969. She received an MSc in Oceanography from Florida State University in 1972 for Significant associations of the motile epibenthos of the turtle-grass beds of St. Joseph Bay, Florida. She received a PhD in Marine Biology in 1978 working with William F. Hernkind at Florida State University for Some ecologically significant aspects of the behavior of the horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus. She trained at the United States Naval base in Panama City in underwater research and diving techniques in the "Scientists in the Sea" program and was the first woman to complete the program. She was an FSU adjunct professor of biological science. In 1980 she founded the Panacea Institute of Marine Science in Panacea, Florida. In 1990, she co-founded the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory, as a non-profit teaching laboratory of which she was the managing director.
Rudloe published five books, in addition to scientific articles on horseshoe crabs, electric rays, mysid shrimp, and sea turtles. She wrote for a larger audience as well, in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Natural History and Audubon. The article "Trouble in Bayou Country", which she co-wrote with her husband, is frequently cited in accounts of environmental damage to the Atchafalaya Basin.
Rudloe also studied Zen Buddhism and received INGA to teach as a JDPSN in the Kwan Um School of Zen. She then became the Abbot at the Cypress Tree Zen Center in Tallahassee, Florida. She was a frequent guest contributor for National Public Radio for both her conservation efforts and Zen Buddhism.
She died of colon cancer, April 27, 2012.
Rudloe was posthumously honored by the Environmental Law Institute with the 2014 Education and Outreach/National Wetlands award.In July 2020 Volunteer Florida, awarded GSML a $485,000 grant to build a 2,000-square-foot classroom complex along with a new parking lot. GSML also acquired six lots adjacent to the original site with a land donation from Gene and Nancy Phipps of the Tallahassee Phipps Foundation to house the building and parking lot. The new Anne Rudloe Memorial Education Center will be dedicated to the memory of Anne Rudloe and will be offering new aquaculture classes to local seafood cooking tutorials, and further its mission of educating the community on marine life.

Selected works