Hob Osterlund

Hob Osterlund is a Safina Center Fellow and an award-winning writer and photographer living on the island of Kauaʻi. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic Explorer, Audubon, National Wildlife, Nature Conservancy, Hana Hou (Hawaiian Airlines), Ms. Magazine and more. Hob's book "Holy Moli: Albatross and Other Ancestors" was published by Oregon State University Press in April 2016. She is the founder of the Kauaʻi Albatross Network and serves as a habitat liaison for a number of private landowners. Her work includes direct services such as systematic monitoring of all Laysan albatross on those properties and serving as a link for the state and federal wildlife agencies.

in 2018, after nearly two years of filming, Hob produced a short documentary about the life of one albatross chick, called "Kalama's Journey." Since then KJ has won a Telly Award (Nature category) and "Best Cinematography" from the Oregon Documentary Film Festival.

https://vimeo.com/manage/297216910/general

For five seasons 2014-2018, Hob worked as a Kauai Coordinator for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology "TrossCam" project. As a result, Laysan albatross live streaming images have been seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers from more than 190 countries.

In 2019 one of Hob's albatross shots was selected in the "Top 100" among thousands of entries in the Audubon Society's annual photo contest.

Hob holds a bachelor’s degree in Ecological Geography from the University of California-Berkeley and a master’s degree in Nursing from the University of Hawaii. As an advanced-practice nurse, Hob founded Hawaii’s first pain and palliative care program at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu. She was the Principal Investigator for the Comedy in Chemotherapy (COMIC) Study. She and her colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial demonstrating the positive impact of comedy on the symptoms of cancer and chemotherapy. She continues to provide “Chuckle Channel” comedy programming for hospital closed-circuit televisions.