While I am assuming many of you are familiar with Dr. Beach (aka Dr. Stephen Leatherman) due to his annual Top 10 Beaches list, at least from our perspective its also worth shedding more light on his career as a beachologist.  Ologist means a person who studies or has knowledge of a particular kind of science so going forward we'll assume a beachologist is someone who studies beaches.  

Per his biography, not only has he written 16 books, 200+ journal articles and technical reports as well as having served on the faculties at 4 universities including my alma mater, UMass Amherst, but around 1990 he also developed 50 criteria to rate beaches and published his first summary of the nation's ~650 major public recreational beaches in 1991.  And since then he's been Dr. Beach where leading up to Memorial Day weekend his annual list is eagerly anticipated .

Just wanted to do a shout out to someone who has brought a tremendous amount of attention and awareness to our beaches and coastline.  So with summer dwindling and in honor of Dr. Beach, let's all head out to our local beaches as often as we can before we have to wear more than shorts and flip flops to do it.