Holland America Line and its partner, Marine Conservation Institute, announced the recipients of the 2012 Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grants in Marine Environmental History and Historical Marine Ecology. Funded through a partnership between the cruise line and institute, the program supports efforts of promising young scientists and graduate students to study the history of ocean ecology to predict future impacts from human interactions.

The 2012 grant recipients are Canan Cakirar, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences; Jock Currie, University of Cape Town; Luis A. Huckstadt, University of California Santa Cruz; and Alexis M. Jackson, University of California Santa Cruz.

The grant program is a tribute to Tegner, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who died in January 2001 while diving off the Southern California coast. The 2012 grants were made possible by a donation by Holland America Line. The funding is an extension of “Our Marvelous Oceans,” a three-year program announced by the two partners in 2010.