Meet the 2018 Ocean Talks Speakers

Dr Luiza Mirpuri is Co-Founder of the Mirpuri Foundation.

At the Mirpuri Foundation, Luiza is responsible for promoting scientific research on plastics and its effects on human health. Her great passion is to bring healing to people suffering from environmental contamination, raising awareness and finding healthy perceptions of our chemical lives.

Dr. Luiza graduated from Portuguese Medical School in 1994. She specialized in Otorhinolaryngology and Cervical Head & Neck Cancer. Having trained as a General Practitioner, Luiza has been practicing for many years in the Portuguese National Health system, Emergency Medicine & Critical Care Medicine, and Air-ambulance.

Dr. Luiza is board-certified in Aeronautical Medicine and she is the Head of Medical Department of Hi Fly. Luiza is an instructor of First-Aid and Human Factors for Flight Crew in the aviation field and also has expertise in chemicals and human health.

www.mirpurifoundation.org

AJ Sutherland is the Chief Officer of S/Y Black Pearl.

AJ was born in Malawi and attended boarding school at Kingswood School in Bath, UK. He had an amazing upbringing with the benefit of a British education and African holidays! AJ has always been fascinated with wildlife and nature. Lake Malawi was his first introduction to our liquid planet and what it has to offer. Following the nature and travelling theme he attended London university to do a Zoology degree and then joined the RAF for 5 years.

For the last 21 years AJ has been on or in the ocean in some capacity or other – starting work as a dive instructor in Western Australia and throughout the Pacific region with over 3000 dives completed and more recently as a mariner on various yachts around the world. He joined the Black Pearl team in January 2017.

“I believe that educating people as to the “why” is the key to saving the planet from human devastation! If people understand why we must stop using so much plastic they may actually change before it’s too late...every little bit counts.”