Meet Alanna

Welcome!

Thanks for being here! You’ll come to find that I truly love nothing more than sharing my love of the ocean with others. I’ve spent the last decade committed to coastal education and exploration, working in intertidal systems on the Oregon Coast, immersed in the elements and environment. I’ve worked in conjunction with the tides and crazy conditions of the oceans for much of my life and couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Through seaweed farming and coastal foraging, I have gained a deeper love and appreciation for the PNW ecosystem and the food it provides, our sustainable seafoods, and all the people and power behind them. I’m ready to continue sharing our unique coastline with others.

  • I started this work in high school when I was working for the Haystack Rock Awareness Program in Cannon Beach. I helped educate visitors about the abundance of wildlife at the base of Haystack Rock with hopes of protecting this popular marine garden. This sparked my LOVE of teaching people and showing them the wacky, weird things on our coast.

    Four years at Oregon State University continued my hands-on experience, as a field technician, lab assistant, and student in various field studies classes. I had the opportunity to live in Australia and study at James Cook University, learning about the vastly different ecosystems of tropical coral reefs.

    Following my degree, I spent two years on Catalina Island educating students of all ages and backgrounds about the ocean environment, its importance to humans, and our role in protecting it. I’ve led groups of high school students on environmental service-learning trips around the world to Fiji, Australia, & Costa Rica.

    I am currently farming Pacific Dulse seaweed for Oregon Seaweed, where much of my time is spent educating the public about regenerative aquaculture and the story of seaweed as a “climate cuisine”.

    This line of work in combination with a love of intertidal ecosystems is what sparked Shifting Tides.

What people are saying…

  • “Alanna's passion and joy exude from her and you will leave inspired and in awe. I trusted her with a retreat I put on for a group of women and not only did she create a safe space for all of us, she set the tone for the day. None of us had done intertidal foraging and many were nervous. Alanna made us feel safe, comfortable, and completely engaged for the entire 3 hours. We all left more connected, educated, and can't wait to do it again. Asking Alanna to be a part of my retreat was one of the best decisions I've made and I cannot wait to work with her again. If you're thinking about doing one of Alanna's workshops or hiring her, stop thinking and do it.”

    Jillie Johnston, Life Coach

  • “Alanna’s passion for and knowledge of wild foods and foraging are perfect matches for Shifting Tides’ workshops. She balanced the scientific knowledge some clients were seeking with the hands-on, seaweed feeling and tasting exploration that fit all folks’ learning styles. I appreciated Alanna’s scheduling of the workshop around the lowest tide, which allowed us to explore a diverse array of seaweeds (and invertebrates) that Alanna had previously scoped out, ensuring our group would discover and experience a lot of species during the two-hour workshop.. She had hot seaweed tea waiting for us at the meeting spot, which was a lovely way to start the group experience. I highly recommend joining Alanna on a Shifting Tides experience."

    -Leslie Palotas, Kayak Guide

  • “Alanna is literally a force of nature, connecting people to the living ocean and its vibrant plant life, revealing how interconnected we are. She brings such an infectious smile and sense of wonder to her workshops. She is a living expression of the coast, because she has spent her life in a deep relationship with this place, and her magic is that she takes joy in sharing all the secrets and wonders of what she knows with others. Alanna is the the Seaweed Queen! She makes this mysterious underwater world of plants come to life revealing how they feed our bodies, provide air to our lungs and delight our eyes with their beauty. If you haven’t experienced a workshop with Alanna, you have never really touched the deep mystery of the tide pools and near shore along our coastlines... Alanna has collaborated with me on my many of my Gyotaku workshops, initiating the participants into the wondrous underwater world of seaweeds!”

    Duncan Berry, Gyotaku Artist, Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve Co-Director

  • My partner and I had been wanting to take a class with Alanna ever since we started seeing her share about her adventures on Instagram. We started with the mussel foraging class, which had us out at low-tide on a gorgeous spring evening. The atmosphere, great conversation, and encounters with nature would have alone made the class worth it. But of course we left with a breadth of knowledge, practical skills, and cooking tips to get the most of our shellfish license! We left with a cooler full of mussels and even some seaweed and barnacles. We left wanting more… we’ll be back to explore more of the coast with Alanna soon!

    - Thomas Kavanagh, 2024 student