Arthur Kopelman Works the Other Hamptons

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/nyregion/arthur-kopelman-works-the-other-hamptons.html

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Arthur Kopelman has been monitoring the local whale and seal populations for long enough that he knows some of the regulars by name. There’s the harbor seal with a marking like a hammer behind her right ear that he has followed for 13 years, so he named her Hammerhead Right. And another with a mark under her left front flipper that looks like a vessel out of Star Trek, so he named her Enterprise.

Dr. Kopelman, 65, is a founder and president of the Coastal Research Education Society of Long Island and a guide for amateurs willing to spend six hours on the sea. He is also a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology — which, with his long white beard and penchant for thermal coveralls, means that he knows something about species adapting to alien habitats. “I try to be a role model for the anti-fashion group, to help people move away from caring about what you own,” he said.

At his class in Ecology and Photography: Sustainable New York, Joe Carrotta, 23, was so impressed that he followed Dr. Kopelman on a season’s worth of outings, despite a susceptibility to seasickness. His first trip out, he photographed for about 45 minutes before the tides got the best of him. On the way home he was pulled over for erratic driving and then treated at roadside for severe dehydration.

After that, he discovered Dramamine.

“I’ve had an obsession with marine life for the longest time,” Mr. Carrotta said. “But this was the first time I ever saw a whale. I was just in awe of this thing jumping out in front of me, a humpback whale, very near the boat. They came up and swam where they could be touching the boat.”

The good news about the area’s populations of harbor seals, gray seals, fin whales and humpback whales — the most common local species — is that they are going up, Dr. Kopelman said.

And the good news about the fashion school, he said, is that “I’ve been able to radically change the institution. Sustainability is now part of the mission of the college.”

And even in a house of style, his earring can turn a head.