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Capt. Rob holds a 100-ton U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license and has decades of experience fishing for a variety of New England species in the Gulf of Maine.  In fall 2007, Rob and his wife, Kate, formed B.O.A.T. C.A.M.P., which grew to become Merrohawke Nature School, in order to further pursue their passion for marine education by expanding nature-based education opportunities for all ages, tots to teachers, in the greater Newburyport area. Rob has been the owner/operator of the F/V Erica Lee since 2005. He is certified in Wilderness First Aid & CPR.

Prior to joining Merrohawke full-time in September 2021, from 2016-2021, Rob served on the science faculty of High Mowing School, a private Waldorf high school in Wilton, NH. Prior to joining High Mowing, Rob taught Biology, AP Biology and Marine Biology from 2006-2015 at Newburyport High School, where he served as chair of the science department from 2011-2014. (While at Newburyport High School, two of Merrohawke’s long-time  teachers, Sarah Sullivan & Trevor Updike, were among Rob’s students!)  Rob also taught biology at Lynn Classical High School from 1996 to 2005.  Rob earned a BA Biology (1996) and a MA in Teaching Biology from Salem State (2000). During the summer of 2009, Rob also worked as a high school curriculum development consultant for a National Marine Fisheries education project on the Atlantic Sturgeon.

Rob was a 2009 recipient of the Swasey Grant for curriculum development at Newburyport High School. In November, he traveled to Monterey, California, to study humboldt squids. This trip included tagging the giant squids with Stanford University’s Dr. William Gilly and his staff from the Hopkins Marine Station. Rob returned with squid to be dissected with his high school marine biology students, as well as great connections and ideas to bridge the east and west coast ecosystems for his students at N.H.S. and at Merrohawke.

In late fall, 2010, Rob received a second action research Swasey Grant to fund an trip to Tahiti in early January 2011 with Sea Education Association of Woods Hole’s Colleagues SEA Semester for one week. While there, Rob sailed aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans. During the 2011-2012 school year Rob was awarded his third Swasey Action Research grant to study wildlife tracking with White Pine Programs in Cape Neddick, Maine.

In April 2012, in recognition of his life-long passion for educating kids about the outdoors and the sea, both in the formal classroom and outdoors aboard the Erica Lee, Salem State University honored Rob with a Friend of the Earth Award. Contact Rob by email.