Kerry Sullivan was raised on Staten Island’s North Shore in Tompkinsville, during the heyday of shipping on Staten Island. Ships from all over the world docked at the piers along the busy waterway of New York Harbor, loading and unloading their cargo. In his teens he decided that someday, he’d go to sea, and see the strange lands that local sailors talked about.

After graduating from the Harry Lundberg School of Seamanship in 1978, he gained a true understanding of the world’s oceans and their ecosystems. He worked aboard an oil rig supply vessel in the Gulf of Mexico, out of New Orleans, Louisiana for “Dixie Carriers” supplying gear and equipment to oil platforms. Then he worked for Delta Marine delivering American aid to South American countries. After a year, he transferred to California to work for Crowley Marine aboard coastal petroleum tankers transporting Alaskan crude oil from Valdez, Alaska to Panama. and lightering and bunkering fuel oils in the Port of Los Angeles at San Pedro/ Long Beach Harbor.

Losing interest in being at sea for long periods of time, he switched his license to Inland Waters, and started working on tugs and tows in the Port of Los Angeles and along the coast of California. After a few years of coastal towing, he came back to the Port of New York and worked for McAllister Brothers Towing and Eklof Marine on tugs and oil barges here in the Port of New York. He also worked for Hess Oil Corporation on its coastal tankers as a member of Local #333.

In the 1990’s, he became involved in marine conservation and wrote a fishing/marine environmental column in the Staten Island Register. In 1997, he was honored with the “Writer of the Year” and “Story of the Year” awards from the York Press Association, for his investigation of the shape-shifting marine dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria piscicida. This complex life form had re-emerged in North Carolina due to excessive amounts of pollution entering coastal waters from local pig farming operations.

Mr. Sullivan also spent 10 years on the New York State Marine Resources Advisory Council as a recreational fishing advisor to the government of New York State on marine policies and regulations. An avid fisherman and explorer, Kerry has traveled the world on adventures and fishing trips to remote jungles in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Amazon in search of the “Once in a Lifetime” fish story.

He is also a Representative to The United Nations for the Urubamba Valley (The Sacred Valley of the Sun) and the Macchu Picchu region in the country of Peru, Where he and his wife started an Orphanage and later a school for the Inca children
of The Sacred Valley.

But it is his work with the Natural Resources Protective Association gives him the most satisfaction, speaking out for a resource that does not have the physical voice and skills that we do, but that is visually stunning and full of life.