Joel Llopiz
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution announces with great sorrow the death of WHOI employee Joel Llopiz on January 19, 2026.
Joel joined WHOI and the Biology Department in 2010 as a postdoctoral scholar, became a member of the scientific staff in 2012, and received tenure in 2023. He was a deeply valued member of our Institution and touched the lives of many in profound and lasting ways. Joel faced his illness with remarkable courage and grace. His warmth, kindness, and smile will be held close in our hearts.
Obituary from Joel’s Family
In Loving Memory: Let’s start with the most important thing. Joel Llopiz was made of love. He loved his young son, Silas, and his wife Martha, not as an action or a choice, but as an implicit part of his existence. He was made of love for them. Maybe sometimes that love looked like sacrifice, but if you asked him, he wouldn’t say it felt like sacrifice. It was just a part of his being. And yet, despite everything he gave to his family, he was a singular individual, modeling balance for Silas at every turn.
By his example and in their lives together, Joel instilled in Silas a deep appreciation for the natural world, especially the ocean. What started as a kid’s curiosity about why the fish were or weren’t biting grew over time, and that curiosity drove Joel to become a thoughtful, creative, and internationally recognized scientist. He had an uncanny understanding of—or really a gestalt for—oceans and energy flow and fish and their communities. Silvery fish in the sunlit waters of the open ocean, tiny-toothed, glowing fish of the twilight zone—the mysteries of the deep maybe didn’t feel quite so mysterious to Joel. The more he learned through his years at sea and in the lab, the more he wondered at it all.
And Joel wanted other people to have access to that wonder. He wanted science to be made better by the inclusion of all different people and all different brains. He worked throughout his career to make oceanography a place where collaboration, cooperation and inclusion were inherent. Just as diversity creates robustness and resilience in ecosystems, so too, he held, diversity in the sciences will only make it stronger. By virtue of his innate gentleness, Joel fostered a warm and welcoming community of scientists that allowed that diversity to flourish and supported greater scientific progress thereby.
But balance. Joel was, as I hinted earlier, remarkably adept at creating balance in his life. Of course, there were times when he struggled, but when he got overwhelmed with work or when the stress of daily obligations or the intense rigor of academia made him question his own belonging, he found comfort on his bicycle. He recharged himself on the road and on the trails. He made connections with other wonderful, thoughtful, cycle-loving humans, and shared moments with them that only they can fully appreciate: pedaling into the sunrise over Nobska Light on a misty Cape Cod morning; windy switchback mountain climbs in the Alps and the Rockies; sprints to the stop sign elbow-to-elbow with friends, propelled by an ever-so-slightly competitive spirit. (Yes, Joel was a bit competitive, but mostly with himself.) These were all such meaningful parts of Joel.
One of the things people often note about Joel’s personality is that he was quiet. Subtle. But somehow, without a whole lot of words, he touched so many people. Those people all reached out when Joel first got sick and they stayed. When brain cancer prevented Joel from doing the thing most essential to him—caring for Silas and Martha—those people rallied around his family and helped keep them all afloat. For that, Joel wants you all to know, he is profoundly grateful.
And now a few other details that people may or may not know about Joel. He played the guitar. He was pretty good, but not great. Though he was good enough to get Martha to agree to marry him when he strummed to her on the beach by their old apartment in Key Biscayne. That was one of the only times they visited the beach while they lived there together, not because they were too busy as grad students, but because Joel didn’t really love the beach! Except to walk on with a dog and a son on a calm winter day. Or to peruse the wrack line for tiny bits of evidence of other organisms in their daily lives. Or to stand with a pair of binoculars and peer offshore, looking for right whale spouts in April. Or to watch Silas in his swim lessons at Stony. So, I guess maybe he did love the beach. He also liked old Volvos, sleeping at sea, good coffee and hazy IPA.
The loss of all these Joel things, the big and the little, is mourned so very deeply by his sweet old dog Penny, by his 10-year-old son Silas (who, is stronger and braver than his parents) and by his wife, Martha Hauff, who is struggling to find a way to live without her obligate symbiont. Joel is survived and remembered with aching hearts by his brother, (Joseph) Garrett Llopiz and his sister Tisha Llopiz, and he is loved, and missed every day by his mother, Deborah Llopiz, and his father, Oscar Llopiz. They came from North Carolina and Cuba, respectively, and settled in Florida. That’s where Joel was born just 48 short years ago. Imagine if he’d had more time.
There will be a gathering to celebrate Joel in the late spring.
0In lieu of flowers, you can consider donating to support Silas’s college fund (https://www.gofundme.com/f/joel-and-marthas-support-fund) or contributing to Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s fight against cancer (http://danafarber.jimmyfund.org/goto/Martha)