JW
Johnathan White
Jonathan’s love for the sea is lifelong. He grew up on the beaches of southern California. He’s built and sailed many boats, logged more than a hundred thousand miles on the Pacific and Atlantic, and surfed all over the world. He has served on numerous conservation boards and committees, including the San Juan Preservation Trust, the San Juan County Marine Resources Committee, and the Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Initiative.
As founder and former director of the Resource Institute, a nonprofit educational organization based in Seattle, Washington, he spent eleven years building a seminar program aboard the schooner Crusader in the Pacific Northwest, from Puget Sound to Southeast Alaska. Resource Institute sponsored weeklong seminars aboard the sixty-five-foot schooner, with subjects ranging from navigation, anthropology, and whale research to poetry, writing, music, and photography. Psychologist James Hillman taught a seminar on the role of animals in dreams; scientist Lynn Margulis discussed the Gaia Hypothesis; poet Gary Snyder pondered the role of killer whales and bears in Haida mythology. Robert Bly, Gretel Ehrlich, Richard Nelson, Paul Winter, Art Wolfe, and William Stafford were among the many others who taught aboard Crusader. Jonathan’s first book, Talking on the Water, grew out of these experiences.