Cliff Kapono

Cliff Kapono is a Native Hawaiian professional surfer who is also a journalist and a marine conservation scientist. He earned his doctorate at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Diego, and he now studies coral health at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. His best-known project is the Surfer Biome Project, in which he examined the microbiome of surfers around the world. He serves as an ambassador for the Save the Waves Coalition and other ocean conservation groups, was named Wave Saver of the Year by that coalition in 2018, and has been profiled in Surfer Magazine and The Surfer's Journal. In 2024 he gave a TED talk with Keolu Fox on storing data in plant DNA.