Serge Dedina, Ph.D. - Executive Director
The Executive Director of WILDCOAST, Serge has guided the innovative and successful conservation efforts of our international team since 2000, when he co-founded WILDCOAST with Dr. Wallace “J.” Nichols.
Based in San Diego, Serge’s conservation achievements include: helping to stop efforts to build large-scale tourist resorts and marinas in national parks and protected areas throughout Northwest Mexico; launching a wildly successful “Don’t eat sea turtle” campaign referred to by author Randy Olsen as “the best ocean campaign in human history”; helping to develop millions of acres of coastal and marine protected areas in California and Mexico including the largest private coastal wilderness reserve in the Californias; developing a campaign with rock superstars Linkin Park around natural climate solutions; starting our pioneering conservation program in Oaxaca.
Serge has helped WILDCOAST break new conservation ground by addressing climate change through large scale blue carbon mangrove and salt marsh conservation and restoration projects.
Serge’s conservation and environmental work have been reported on by Newsweek, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, Animal Planet, San Diego Union Tribune, Washington Post, BBC, National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Televisa National News, TV-Azteca National News, CBS News, and 60 Minutes among others. In recognition of his successful conservation endeavors, Serge received the Surf Industry's Environmental Award, San Diego Zoological Society’s Conservation Medal as well as the California Coastal Commission’s “Coastal Hero” Award. Serge was named a UC San Diego John Muir Fellow in 2013 and was honored as a Peter Benchley “Hero of the Sea” in 2016.
Before co-founding WILDCOAST, Serge was the founding Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Baja California - Sea of Cortez Program where he initiated successful efforts to protect Loreto Bay National Park, Espiritu Santo Island Reserve and Cabo Pulmo National Park. While earning his doctorate in geography, Serge and his wife Emily Young carried out research for the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission on conservation and development in the gray whale lagoons of Baja California Sur. They also discovered plans by the Mitsubishi Corporation to build a 500,000-acre industrial salt facility on the shore of Laguna San Ignacio and then helped to defeat the project. Serge also worked as an environmental planner in San Diego, evaluating the impact of large-scale development projects such as airport expansion, binational transportation infrastructure, military base construction, state highways and residential development.
Serge grew up in Imperial Beach, California, and spent his childhood and college years successfully helping to preserve the Tijuana Estuary and South San Diego Bay as National Wildlife Refuges. Serge is an avid surfer, swimmer and former State of California and City of Imperial Beach Ocean Lifeguard. He was elected Mayor of Imperial Beach, California, in 2014 and re-elected in 2018.
The author of Saving the Gray Whale, Wild Sea; and Surfing the Border, Serge has published articles on conservation and environmental issues in the Journal of Borderlands Studies, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Sacramento Bee, California Coast & Ocean, Surfer’s Journal, Surfer’s Path, and Drift, and was the coastal columnist for Southern California AOL Patch news sites. Serge holds a B.A. in Political Science from UC San Diego, a M.S. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin.