Ariel Rubissow Okamoto

Ariel Rubissow Okamoto

Photo of Ariel Rubissow-Okamoto

When I was becoming a writer I had a fire in my belly for saving the planet. What I imagined doing with my life was mainly protesting,  and calling out all the ways in which we were being unfair to the birds, bees and truffula trees that share our space here on planet Earth. But where I ended up in my writing was not in activism but in observing, describing, and celebrating the people at the frontlines taking care of our one special Estuary, not the planet. Whether the scientists themselves, the experimental projects, the complexities, the beauties, these things all fueled my flame and made me feel involved. The scientists and managers became my heroes; the landscapes my challenge to become intimate with, from the dirt up (sediment was a big topic for me) to the rain down (runoff was another delight). The deadlines, year in, year out, to produce or edit Estuary News stories are a mirror in my mind of our continued progress. There was always, and still is, so much to write about.

— Ariel Rubissow Okamoto

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About the author

Ariel Rubissow Okamoto is both today’s editor-in-chief and the founding editor of ESTUARY magazine (1992-2001). She enjoys writing in-depth, silo-crossing stories about water, restoration, and science. She’s a co-author of a Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press 2011), frequent contributor of climate change stories to Bay Nature magazine, and occasional essayist for publications like the San Francisco Chronicle (see her Portfolio here). In other lives, she has been a vintner, soccer mom, and waitress. She lives in San Francisco close to the Bay with her architect husband Paul Okamoto.

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