Julie Luecke lives in Bowie, Maryland, near the headwaters of the Patuxent River but grew up surrounded by the much saltier waters of the Lynnhaven River, Chesapeake Bay, and Atlantic Ocean in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She attended the College of William & Mary for undergrad, during which time she interned with CBF’s Virginia oyster team and decided to pursue a career in oyster restoration. During her time as the Virginia oyster restoration specialist at CBF, she assisted in the construction of 13 oyster restoration reefs and four living shorelines as well as created a standardized reef monitoring program and obtained her U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license.

Now, Julie manages the Maryland oyster restoration team, overseeing the deployment of spat on shell and reef balls in rivers across Maryland. She sits on the Chesapeake Bay Program Oyster and SAV workgroups and has her Chesapeake Bay Landscaping Professionals – Living Shorelines certification. She also leads CBF’s pioneering work in remote and rapid assessment monitoring approaches, including the use of hydroacoustics, sonar, photogrammetry, satellite imagery, video analysis, and other techniques to quantify ecosystem response to restoration.

Julie is currently pursuing a master’s degree in environmental science and policy at Johns Hopkins University. In her free time, she loves hiking, traveling, reading, and cooking. Her favorite place in the watershed is the Brock Environmental Center and the Lynnhaven River it overlooks (shh—don’t tell her Maryland colleagues)!