Dancing on Rising Tides

It was a double celebration for the popular nonprofit Heal The Ocean at the popular oceanside eatery, The FisHouse, when Alison Thompson, operations policy coordinator since 2018, was given a “Great Wave” goodbye as she leaves for New Haven, Connecticut, to join graduate school at Yale University.

She is working her way towards a master’s degree in environmental management, with a focus on coastal climate depletion and policy, and sustainable water management.

The fun bash, hosted by FisHouse owner and HTO board member Tom White and his son, Adam, also marked the publication of co-founder and executive director Hillary Hauser’s new 258-page book Dancing on Waves: A True Story of Finding Love & Redemption in the Ocean, which the 77-year-old author tells me has taken nearly 20 years to come to fruition.

“I started it in 1998, initially with the New York publishers, Doubleday, when I was suffering from breast cancer,” says Hillary, a former diving photojournalist. “Then it just sat on the shelf until I took another look at it six months ago. I was unsure what to do and showed it to a couple of friends who loved it and said I should get it published, so here we are. We had also started HTO in 1998 which took off like a bomb went off, so I was very, very busy looking after the organization, not to mention my health.”

Among the supporters turning out and noshing on the eclectic crab and steak comestible were Jean-Michel Cousteau, Harry and Drake Rabin, Jasmin Tupy, Kellen O’Connell, and Jeff and Lisa Thompson.