Meet The Team
Kayla Feairheller
Founder & President
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PADI Divemaster
PADI Sidemount Diver
NAUI Scientific Diver with Kelp Forest Reef Check
AIDA 3 Free Diver
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Kayla is a Divemaster, a scientific diver, and a freelance conservationist who has pursued ocean exploration and science in every aspect of her life since she began her ocean journey when she moved to California in 2021.
Kayla’s career as a software engineer is centered around ocean technology. She joined Coral Gardeners in June, 2023 and works alongside engineers and scientists on the CG Labs team to build a Reef Observation System. She has experience in projects processing bathymetric seafloor data and automating coral reef heath models. She volunteers her time to restoring coral reefs, studying whale sharks, and monitoring kelp forests all over the world. She’s passionate about keeping our oceans clean and she hosts beach cleanups as often as she can.
When she’s not underwater, Kayla loves hiking, camping, and backpacking in the mountains. She loves long road trips, reading books about explorers, and she cherishes quality time with her loved ones. Most of the time, though, you’ll find her with her toes in the sand and her hair salty from the sea.
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Jessy Shelton
VP & Secretary
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PADI Scuba Instructor
PADI Sidemount Diver
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Jessy is a Scuba Instructor who was born and raised in Southern California waters. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science and Resource Management with an emphasis in Marine Sciences from CSU Channel Islands. Her research ranged from coastal and fluvial geomorphology to micro plastics to coastal access!
Climate change, beach erosion and effectively communicating science are what set her heart on fire!
She has a background in education as well, working as an outdoor educational guide across the Channel Islands for middle schoolers in her college days. She loves the outdoors but she especially loves being in the water! She’s been surfing her whole life, has over 1,000 dives under her belt (both recreational and technical), loves freediving and paddle boarding, and you can always find her enjoying the beach!
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Olivia Hughes
Treasurer
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PADI Open Water Diver
MOCC Class Certified
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Olivia's love for the ocean and the environment began at a young age. During her time in college, she received a degree in Biology, became a certified diver, and spent a semester on the Chesapeake Bay studying the ecosystems in depth, analyzing solutions to environmental problems, and exploring the nexus between science, policy, and people’s everyday life. Olivia went on to research sea turtle energetics in Hawai’i where she spent a field season in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands monitoring nesting Green turtles.
Olivia is an outdoor enthusiast and an avid backpacker who thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. She loves to spend her time traveling to new places where she goes hiking and diving to see the natural wonders of the world.
Professionally, Olivia expanded upon her science background and pursued the geospatial sciences. She has worked with datasets collected by drones and autonomous underwater vehicles and she currently serves as a Geospatial Application Developer for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources where she helps sustain and protect Washington's natural resources.
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Sofia Becerra
Content & Marketing Intern
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PADI Advanced Open Water Diver
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Sofia’s love for animals began when she became an ocean ambassador in 5th grade following a Great White Shark Cage diving expedition in 2018. Soon after, she gave a presentation to her school regarding shark biology. Over the years, her love for the ocean grew as she picked up surfing in her hometown San Diego where she competed in a surfing competition. In 2022 and 2023, Sofia was a lifeguard Aid at Moonlight Beach where she spent 6 hours each day at the beach, soaking up the ocean every minute of the day.
In 2022, Sofia traveled to Fiji where she learned about shark behavior, marine biology, and ocean conservation. During this program, she dove at the Shark Reef Marine Reserve and completed a research paper on how Bull Shark behaviors differ at different depths. In her Junior year, she founded the Canyon Crest Academy’s Ocean Conservation Club with a mission to address the problems facing our ocean and spread awareness for them. She accomplishes this by organizing biweekly beach cleanups at her local beaches and giving monthly presentations about ocean conservation.
This summer Sofia is interning with Coral Vita in the Bahamas where she will work with the team to grow resilient corals and transplant them onto the damaged and dying reefs surrounding their island. She hopes this experience prepares her to study Marine Biology in college and gives her more knowledge on the ocean and how we can save it.
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Sofia is one of our Content & Marketing Interns and her primary focus is creating content for our TikTok. By joining us on Catalina Island for scientific diving expeditions, she makes content plans, captures the content, and creates videos about what it's like to join Bleu World on Catalina Island. Follow us @bleu.world on TikTok to see her work!
Nico Becerra
Content & Marketing Intern
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PADI Advanced Open Water Diver
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Nico started his ocean journey before he can even remember. At the young age of four years old, he was already snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean along the coast of his hometown, San Diego. He received his Junior Open Water certification from PADI when he was 10 years old and developed a passion for scuba diving at an early age.
Most of Nico’s dive experience is centered around shark research and conservation. He volunteered with Broadreach, a program that allows high school students to immerse themselves in a new culture while researching unique species. During this program, Nico had the opportunity to dive with tiger sharks, bull sharks and nurse sharks in order to monitor their behavior for interesting patterns and write papers about his findings.
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Nico is one of our Content and Marketing Interns and his work focuses on writing a series of blogs about our conservation partners. As he writes to educate our community about our work with each partner, Nico shares stories from his own personal experiences in the underwater world. Each blog is an informative and inspiring piece and you can check them out by visiting our Collaborative page!
Jessica Pirrone
Grant Writer
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PADI Rescue Diver
LMSW (licensed Master Social Worker)
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Jessica grew up in Michigan, where she was always surrounded by water and credits this as her main reason for loving being in and around the water. As a child of two teachers, she spent her summers traveling and would spend a lot of time in the ocean. From an early age she has loved exploring, traveling, hiking and being outside.
In college she studied Early Childhood Education and after graduation moved to Australia where she lived for 6 years and completed her Master’s Degree in Social Work. While living in Australia she spent a lot of time in the ocean paddle boarding, snorkeling, and free diving. She would volunteer at awareness events helping educate the population about the dangers of dredging on the Great Barrier Reef and the importance of Marine Protected Areas. Over the years she was able to see the impact humans had on the reef she had come to love, and realized that she wanted to use the experiences she gained from working as a Social Worker to help support the environment. She began to explore ways she could get her feet wet in conservation.
This led her to scuba diving and in 2021 she completed her dive certifications in Utila Honduras. After completing her training she spent a month as a Marine Conservation intern at the Whale Shark Oceanic Research Center(WSORC). She studied fish and coral species, gained experience in survey dives, whale shark monitoring, maintaining coral nurseries and coral outplanting. This experience was life changing and has motivated her to keep pursuing ways to help educate, conserve and protect the ocean. In October, she will be returning to Utila to complete her Divemaster training. In addition she will complete another internship at WSORC this time as a Research Assistant.
Professionally, Jessica is a Social Worker and has worked in a variety of settings from schools, to hospitals and is currently working with the elderly in Las Vegas where she lives with her boyfriend and fur babies. Jessica loves to travel, read and spend time with her family and friends. She plans on going back to school to get her masters in Environmental Science.
One of her passion projects is creating a Youtube channel to help educate young people about Marine Ecosystems. As a former School Social Worker she saw how little her students knew about the importance of the oceans and dangers they are facing and how little opportunity they had to interact with the ocean and its many ecosystems. She is currently working on starting a Youtube Channel for educational ocean content.
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Jessica is joining our team as a Grant Writer. She will be working with partners and members of our team to write grants in order to help fund Bleu World's community science initiatives and expand our mission.
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Alex Garibaldi
Frontend Engineer
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PADI Open Water Diver
PADI Enriched Air Diver
PADI AWARE Coral Reef Conservation Diver
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Alex is a passionate ocean advocate whose love for the sea has been a lifelong journey, consistently immersing herself in the underwater world. Her diving experiences span from the murky waters of Connecticut to the crystalline depths of Cozumel. Recently, Alex dove with the Coral Restoration Foundation Program in Key Largo, participating in essential dives within their Coral Nursery to support marine ecosystem restoration. Her fascination with marine life encompasses the entire spectrum, from tiny organisms to large sea creatures.
Professionally, Alex is a software engineer with a background in Computer Science complemented by her college coursework in marine biology. She has experience in full-stack engineering, seamlessly integrating frontend design with backend functionalities. Her technical expertise is supported by a dedication to developing solutions that are innovative and user-centric.
When she’s not coding or diving, Alex enjoys a variety of pursuits including playing field hockey, reading, skiing, and playing the piano. Her enthusiasm for learning and exploring new frontiers, both underwater and in the tech world, continues to drive her commitment to making a positive impact on the marine environment and the digital landscape.
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Alex is joining our team as a Frontend Engineer and her work will focus on developing a map-based web application for visualizing large conservation datasets, recording a variety of surveys in the field, and logging dives at sites all around the world. She will work closely with our growing tech team to create an application that is accessible, interactive, and modern.
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Emily Rodriguez
Conservation Data Intern
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PADI Open Water Diver
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Emily is a passionate and dedicated individual with a love for the underwater world. From a young age, she has been drawn to the beauty and mystery of the ocean, and has always had a desire to explore its depths. She discovered her passion for marine sustainability when she began open water swimming. Since then, she has competed in various open water races including completing the Catalina Channel Crossing as part of a 6 person relay team in 2023.
Through the program DiverSeaFy, Emily has gained extensive experience in diving which began when she earned her PADI Open Water certification. Since completing her course, she regularly participates in cleanup dives in her community. Recently, she traveled to Catalina Island with a group of fellow DiverSeaFy divers to complete a day of scientific diving in the kelp forests with our team at Bleu World. She has a keen eye for spotting marine life and was able to collect data on fish abundance and marine debris alike during our survey dives along the coast. Emily is always eager to learn more about the underwater world and this passion shows when she spends her time in the ocean studying and protecting it.
Emily is a strong advocate for marine conservation and sustainability and is committed to protecting and preserving our oceans for future generations. Emily's enthusiasm to learn more about the marine environment and passion for diving will be continued as she plans to major in Society and Environment at UC Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources.
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Emily is one of our Conservation Data Interns and her work focuses on better understanding the role of California kelp species and invasive algae species in our ecosystems on Catalina Island. Her work will involve reviewing scientific publications about these species and analyzing historical datasets tracking their abundance. Emily plans to tell the story of our kelp forests complete with data visualizations, historical and scientific references, and lots of awesome underwater photos!
Pablo Berlanga
Conservation Data Intern
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PADI Open Water Diver
National Vocational Beach Lifeguard Qualification (NVBLQ)
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Pablo is a passionate individual with a love for the sea and a strong background in mathematics and computer science, currently studying at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. His journey into the marine environment began with his role as a Lifeguard for the Royal Life Saving Society, where he led certified teams for on-site pool and beach facilities, ensuring safety and rescue operations.
Pablo's commitment to marine conservation and safety continued as a Program Facilitator at Atlantic Pacific International Rescue. Here, he worked on community-first rescue operations and educational programs, fostering a deep understanding of maritime safety and emergency response.
Fluent in Spanish, Italian, French, and English, his multilingual skills enhance his ability to connect with diverse communities. His passion for the ocean and dedication to leveraging technology for environmental and safety purposes drive his ongoing efforts to explore and protect the marine world.
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Pablo is one of our Conservation Data Interns and his work focuses on analyzing the role of invertebrate species in our marine ecosystems. His responsibilities include reviewing scientific publications about these species and performing advanced data analysis on datasets tracking their abundance and development over time. Pablo plans to present his findings through detailed data visualizations and technical reports. His work will provide crucial insights into the dynamics of invertebrate populations and their impact on the health of our oceans.