John Steinbeck recently retired from Tenera Environmental where he managed the San Luis Obispo office and was the principal owner and President of the company since 2018. As part of Tenera, he was the lead scientist for the marine monitoring program at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, one of the largest monitoring studies in the United States. He has also worked on various advisory groups for the National Marine Fisheries Service addressing issues related to black abalone, a federally protected species. He currently serves as the lead for the team working on restoration of the species as part of the NMFS Recovery Team. He has a master’s degree from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in marine sciences and has worked on the central coast as a biologist since the mid-1970s.