Harms and Freedoms: Captivity, Natural Habitats, and Sanctuary Conference

Date: Thursday, April 3, 2025

Description: The first day of the conference will take place on World Aquatic Animal Day, celebrated annually to raise awareness of the importance of aquatic animals and their habitats. The programming will focus on legal and advocacy efforts for aquatic animals globally under the broad theme of the conference — Harms and Freedoms: Captivity, Natural Habitats, and Sanctuary. We are excited to host presentations on relevant research, campaigns, reforms and other pursuits relating to these topics.

Recording: All programming on this day will be recorded and made available online after the conference.

Panel 1 - Turning the Tide: Systemic Change for Aquatic Animals

• Location: Online only
  • You will receive a Zoom link within 48 hours of the event
• 12 pm - 2 pm ET
• Moderated by Miranda Eisen

Panel 1 Presenters

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Mei Brunson

Beyond Bleeding: Ending Horseshoe Crab Exploitation in Endotoxin Testing

Mei Brunson is a third-year JD student at Lewis & Clark Law School. She aims to leverage litigation to advance animal, food, and environmental justice. Throughout law school, Mei has interned with Animal Partisan, the Center for Animal Law Studies, Earthjustice, Farm Sanctuary, Food & Water Watch, and the Humane Society of the United States. She serves as submissions editor for the Animal Law Review and co-directs the Lewis & Clark Animal Legal Defense Fund Student Chapter. After graduation, Mei will clerk for the Honorable Judge Kristina Hellman on the Oregon Court of Appeals.

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Lipsa Dash

Aquatic Adoption: Exploring Legal Frameworks for Captive Marine Animal Guardianship

Dr. Lipsa Dash has completed her PhD from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar and has pursued her Post Graduation Degree from Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, IIT Kharagpur. She completed her Bachelor's in BSC LLB (IPR Hons.) from KIIT School of Law, KIIT DU. She has worked at Banana IP as a Patent Associate and interning at many reputed governmental bodies, firms, companies, has given her insidious knowledge of work culture in different sectors. She was one of the candidates to be selected for Google-Sole Luna Scholarship from India. She has authored scholastic papers on Intellectual Property Law, Cyber Law and allied laws which have fostered new ideas in the legal arena and has served as resource person in different national and international forums. She has been a part of the prestigious Cambridge Centre Law Lecturers' Workshop on Animal Rights Law as apart from being a teacher, she is a Zoophilist, naturalist and believes in being a voice for the voiceless.

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Marty McKendry

The Free Willy Law: Canada's Whale and Dolphin Captivity Ban

Marty McKendry is a lawyer serving as Senior Advisor – Parliamentary Strategy to Senator Pierre Dalphond and Senator Marty Klyne in the Senate of Canada. Marty played a key staff role in passing Canada’s 2019 ban on whale and dolphin captivity, as well as a ban on the trade in shark fins. Marty has also worked on legislation to protect captive elephants, great apes, and big cats, and a proposed ban on the export of horses for slaughter overseas. Marty graduated from the University of Toronto’s law school in 2012 and has a Master’s degree in philosophy from the same school.

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Carl Safina

Disconnect With Nature

Carl Safina is an ecologist, author, and founding President of the Safina Center. He is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University. His work centers on animal psychology and the relationship between humans and nature. His book, Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe, is a moving account of raising, then freeing, an orphaned screech owl, whose lasting friendship with him illuminates humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

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Amy P. Wilson

Sea of Change: Emerging Issues in Aquatic Animal Law

Amy P. Wilson is South African licensed attorney and researcher focusing on the intersection of the rights of humans, nonhuman animals and Nature in law and policy and creative approaches to the attainment of an inclusive system of justice. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of Animal Law Reform South Africa, the first dedicated animal law non-profit in the country. She is a Lecturer, Doctoral Candidate and Research Associate with the University of Johannesburg, a Senior Adjunct Lecturer with the University of the Western Cape, South Africa and an Adjunct Instructor at Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University in the USA.

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Panel 2 - Blue Frontiers: Legal and Scientific Advances for Aquatic Animals

• Location: In-person and online 
  • In-Person - GW Law | Faculty Conference Center, Burns Law Library 5th Floor, 716 20th ST NW
  • Online - You will receive a Zoom link within 48 hours of the event
• 4 pm - 6 pm ET
• Moderated by Amy P. Wilson

Panel 2 Presenters

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Vinny Byju

Scrutinizing a Fishy Loophole: Enforcing the ESA to Protect Salmon

Vinny Byju is a 3L at Harvard Law School from Sarasota, Florida and loves all things nature. Growing up working on a ranch, Vinny developed a love of horsemanship and has since worked in the equestrian world as a trail guide, horse trainer, and groom for a professional polo team. While living in Hawaii, Vinny also got hooked on bird watching and has become an avid enthusiast. Vinny enjoys spending his time outside, hanging with friends, or being ignored by his cat Luna.

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Alex Cerussi

Netting Change: Addressing the Harms of Industrial Aquaculture via State Legislation

Alex Cerussi (she/her) is the senior state policy manager at Mercy For Animals, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a more just and sustainable food system. Alex oversees the organization’s state, county, and city policy initiatives related to farmed animal protection, the environment, and food-system reform. She currently serves as the resolutions vice-chair of the American Bar Association’s Animal Law Committee and previously served as the committee’s chair. She also serves as board chair for Harmony Farm Sanctuary and served as a 2024 member of the Bend City Council Advisory Environment and Climate Committee. Alex is licensed to practice law in the state of New York and the District of Columbia. She received a BA in political science from Elon University and her JD from the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University.

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Craig Foster

Finding the Wild in a Tame World

Craig Foster is an Oscar and BAFTA winning filmmaker, naturalist, author and ocean explorer. His films – including the acclaimed My Octopus Teacher – have won more than 150
international awards, and his recently published book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World, has received global accolades. Foster is the co-founder of Sea Change Project, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the long-term conservation and regeneration of the Great African Seaforest. For Foster, biodiversity is the key to healing our natural world. It is the immune system of our planet. He says: ‘No continued loss of ecosystems is acceptable for economic gain.'

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Kathy Hessler

Kathy Hessler is the inaugural Assistant Dean for Animal Legal Education at George Washington University Law School (GWU), and Director of the Animal Legal Education Initiative (ALEI), working with Joan Schaffner and Iselin Gambert, in a program made possible by generous support from ALDF.
Dean Hessler has been a clinical law professor for 30 years and has been teaching animal law for 22 years. She is the first law professor hired to teach animal law full-time. She received her JD from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary and her LLM from Georgetown University Law Center.

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Lori Marino

Science of Captive Animals

Lori Marino is a neuroscientist who has studied animal behavior and intelligence for thirty years. She is an Adjunct Professor in Animal Studies at New York University, Executive Director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy and President of the Whale Sanctuary Project. Lori is internationally known for her work on the evolution of the brain and intelligence in dolphins and whales (as well as primates and farmed animals). She has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers, book chapters, and magazine articles on comparative brain anatomy and cognition, self-awareness in nonhuman animals, human-nonhuman animal relationships, and the evolution of intelligence. Lori also has interests in bioethics and animal law and policy, and, in particular, in the intersection of science and law.

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Jamie McLaughlin

Using AI and Robotics to Improve Aquatic Animal Lives

Jamie McLaughlin is an animal law and environmental law attorney.  She is the founder and president of Three Pearls Charities Inc., a nonprofit that addresses issues at the intersection of animal welfare, social justice, and the environment. Jamie has worked with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Humane Society of the United States, and other nonprofits.  She is an associate attorney for the Nonhuman Rights Project. Jamie serves as a Vice Chair for the ABA ILS International Animal Law Committee, and is a Vice Chair of the Missouri Bar Association Animal Law Committee. She received her J.D. with a Certificate in Public Interest Law from DePaul University College of Law, in Chicago, Illinois.  Jamie received both an animal law LLM. and an environmental law LLM cum laude from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.

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Hana Nabulsi

Crossing Species Barriers: Investigating the Impact of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza on Aquatic Life and Ecosystem Health

Hana graduated from DePaul University with a degree in Neuropsychology and a minor in biological studies. After working in the medical research field for a few years she pivoted her career goals to focus on her passion, animal welfare. Hana helped jumpstart a now flourishing rabbit and guinea pig adoption program at a shelter in her home city, Chicago. While it was difficult to leave that meaningful work, law school felt like the next natural progression. She is now a 3L at George Washington University Law School where she serves as a Research Assistant to the Animal Law Program Dean.  Hana is also a Co-President for the GW SALDF and a law student vice chair for the ABA Animal Law Committee.  Hana hopes to use her law degree to help advocate for factory farmed animals.

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Nora Teter

Introducing Consensual Release for Cetaceans

Nora loves being with animals and thinking her way toward their worlds. She is an M.A student in the Animal Studies Department at NYU, where her thesis centers on the incorporation of a consent paradigm into contemporary forms of animal captivity. She has conducted research on captive animal ethics in settings ranging from zoos and aquaria to sanctuaries and the 4-H youth livestock program. She is also a member of NYU’s WATR lab, where she is at work on a paper on cetacean release. For the last two years, she’s acted as president for NYU’s Animal Rights Collective, where she’s initiated a series of music festivals that honor different “invasive species” and “pests”. She is particularly interested in storytelling and community building as an approach to questions of animal protection.

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Lynne Sneddon

Safeguarding the Welfare of Whales and Other Cetaceans

Professor Sneddon has worked for over two decades on topics that have advanced fish health and welfare and used her research to drive the agenda for the improved welfare of fishes. Fish welfare was an understudied area prior to 2002 since it was previously believed that they did not possess pain receptors (nociceptors). Sneddon identified nociceptors on the head and face of rainbow trout for the first time published in 2002. This novel discovery that fish experience pain has since fueled Sneddon’s research, and she has dedicated her career to informing the way in which fishes are treated in the laboratory and in other contexts. Sneddon has become the recognized world expert on fish welfare and was invited to develop training resources, participate in workshops, and deliver educational events and talks to veterinarians as well as technical care staff and academics. Sneddon currently leads her team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden investigating how to improve the way we treat fishes, decapod crustaceans and cuttlefish.

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