The coastline along the New York City borough of Brooklyn is vastly different than that along the northern Oregon Coast, but for Yvana Iovino, both mean one thing: Being close to the alluring majesty of the ocean and its panoply of wildlife.
“Humans have always been drawn to the ocean,” she says. “It’s so beautiful—the force of it all. … It just makes your heart beat faster.”
Now a resident of the West Coast for several decades, Yvana attributes her love of the ocean to her childhood and young adulthood in Brooklyn, complete with daytrips to Manhattan Beach and buying fresh fish from local purveyors.
“That sets something in your head—like, ‘that’s home’,” she says.
Stepping into Marine Conservation
Yvana remained in the city throughout undergraduate college and medical school, eventually moving to Connecticut to complete her residency as an obstetrician-gynecologist and then finding her way west, working for several years on the Najavo Nation’s reservation in northeastern Arizona. Her work as an OB-GYN continued in eastern Washington, where she primarily cared for migrant farmworkers, and concluded in Tacoma.
Her connection to the coastline along the Pacific Ocean ramped up with family visits to Oceanside, Oregon, as her children were growing up. In 2017, she bought a home in Manzanita and then moved to the area fulltime in 2020. One thing she admires about the small coastal towns is that they are “run on volunteers.” She quickly embraced that spirit, becoming a volunteer with the Haystack Rock Awareness Program (HRAP) in Cannon Beach and the Tidepool Ambassador Program (TAP) at Cape Falcon Marine Reserve.
Through those programs, she got connected with Angela Whitlock, the Marine Program Manager at North Coast Land Conservancy, and Michelle Schwegmann, who has been NCLC’s Tidepool Ambassador Program (TAP) Volunteer Coordinator for the past two summers. Since then, Yvana has started helping with NCLC’s marine debris and sea star surveys and participating in the annual Beachy Keen BioBlitz.
Although she enjoys community science, she has a soft spot for the community engagement and outreach involved in being a TAP ambassador. People from all over the world come to visit the Oregon Coast and bathe in its natural beauty, while local residents seek to deepen their relationship to their home.
“It’s nice to feel our enthusiasm spreads to the people who are looking at stuff in the tidepools and getting excited about what they see,” she says.
A self-taught linocut artist, Yvana also shared those skills with the NCLC community by hosting a workshop at Circle Creek Conservation Center last year. She strongly believes all people have an artistic inclination, and she appreciated the opportunity to help them tap into “this part of themselves that did want to create beauty.”
Additionally, her creativity inspired the idea for a large felt board depicting a tidepool with small felt creatures—sea stars, black oystercatchers, anemones, and more—for people to place into the scene. It was used this past summer for tabling in Oswald West State Park near the entrance to Short Sand Beach and at farmers markets, to great success, providing a way to connect with people and share with them information about Cape Falcon Marine Reserve, the marine environment, and marine wildlife.
Developing a Friendship with the Ocean
Yvana is galvanized in her wide array of efforts as a volunteer with NCLC’s marine program by the “feeling of caring for the ocean and being a steward.”
It’s natural, she explains, for a person to experience a sense of admiration and empathy as they develop a relationship to a specific place, such as the coastline and beaches along the marine reserve—in particular, Short Sand Beach, where TAP takes place each summer.
“It’s almost like a friend,” she says. “It’s almost like the ocean is a person: the waves, the rhythm, how it reacts to the moon. It’s so much a part of the Earth, and it’s so much a part of who we are.”
That strong relationship transforms into a sense of responsibility to conserve and care for the marine environment.
“We just have to be good stewards,” she says, adding that solving large-scale environmental problems must necessarily take into account the Earth’s major bodies of water. “The ocean is everything.”
She has a strong affinity for marine life—lemon nudibranchs being her favorite, because “they’re fat and yellow and cute,” she says. She also enjoys tracking the seasonal appearance, migration, and activities of seabirds, such as pigeon guillemots and black oystercatchers.
“It’s always exciting when the summer starts, because that’s when they come,” she says.
However, the joy she derives from volunteering with NCLC also comes from the people she works alongside, from staff to other volunteers. Together, they form “such a wonderful group of people who are excited about the ocean and about the wildlife,” and it fosters a powerful sense of community and belonging.
“The atmosphere they create is so welcoming and warm and inquisitive,” she says. “I like the people part of it.”
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