Sydney Luitgaarden

operations lead

Hometown: Seattle, WA 

Current Residence: Kaimuki, O’ahu

Sydney knew she wanted to be a marine biologist from the early age of 8 when she saw shark week on the discovery channel for the first time. Following her childhood dream, she attended UH Mānoa, completing a marine biology degree. During her undergraduate years, she fell into a very niche study field of fish guts in cooperation with Cornell University, Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, and Paepae o He’eia. Currently, she is still working with fish guts at Hawaiʻi Pacific University as a master’s student, completing a thesis on skipjack tuna diet and plastic ingestion. You can commonly find Sydney climbing rocks, making elaborate marine plastic ecopoxy art, or somewhere outside looking at limu. Fueled by energy drinks and peanut butter chocolate chip sandwiches, she is very excited to return to Papahānaumokuākea to help clean up the mess humans have made in an ecosystem that can't help itself!