Rudloes to receive national award for wetland protection and education

The Environmental Law Institute has named Jack and the late, Anne Rudloe of the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea as recipients of the National Wetlands Award for Education and Outreach. 

Since 1989, the National Wetlands Awards program has honored individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary effort in wetland conservation, research, or education.

The Rudloes have led the push for legislative protections throughout Florida and have helped protect more than 35,000 acres of marine habitat. 

Their work is cited in nearly 100 scholarly articles for wetlands research and they have helped educate more than a quarter of a million people including thousands of school-age children on the importance of wetlands through Gulf Specimen Marina Lab education center and aquarium,

The Rudloes be honored at a ceremony in May in Washington, D.C..

And if winning a national award wasn't enough - Jack Rudloe now has a new species of Box Jellyfish named after him.

The jellyfish is the Chiropsella rudloei – it spawns in the wetland habitat of mangrove swamps. 

The jellyfish was collected by Jack Rudloe during an International Indian Ocean Expedition in Madagascar in the early 1960's but was only recently catalogued through the  Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. 

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