--FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—
October 26, 2010
Contact: Tatiana Brailovskaya, Director of Communications, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences 207.633.9633; tbrailovskaya@bigelow.org
Bigelow Laboratory Café Scientifique: The Census of Marine Life – Reflections on a Decade of Discovery
WEST BOOTHBAY HARBOR, ME – Bigelow Executive Director Dr. Graham Shimmield will discuss The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable: Reflections on a Decade of Discovery from the Census of Marine Life at special Café Scientifique at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at the Frontier Café (14 Maine St., Mill 3 Fort Andross, in Brunswick, Maine). Shimmield will talk about his recent attendance in London at the formal conclusion of the Census of Marine Life (CoML), and about the global scope of this massive international project. Shimmield, who was Chair of the European branch of Census of Marine Life Program, will describe the project’s decade-long mission to describe diversity of life in the world’s oceans and human impacts on marine life.
“The Census has brought more than 2,700 scientists together from multiple disciplines,” says Shimmield. “Its tenth year marks the culmination of the largest endeavor ever undertaken to understand the life in the oceans. ”
The CoML has provided vast amounts of information about the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life. To date, over 6,000 new species have been described as a result of more 28 million entries from over 540 expeditions and databases in 80 nations. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided the initial support for the CoML, funding the international infrastructure that helped leverage the $650 million ultimately dedicated to this effort.
Before coming to Bigelow Laboratory in 2008, Shimmield, a marine geochemist, was director of Scottish Association of Marine Science and the Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His research focuses on geochemical processes in oceans, identifying indicators of ocean and climate change and examining human impacts on coastal and deep seas. In this context, he has studied the environmental impact of off shore oil installations.
An internationally known center for global ocean research, Bigelow Laboratory conducts research ranging from microbial oceanography -- examining biological productivity in the world’s oceans at the molecular level -- to the large-scale biogeochemical processes that drive interactions between ocean ecosystems and global environmental conditions. These programs have taken Bigelow scientists around the world to every ocean and the polar seas. The Laboratory’s Café Scientifique gatherings are free and open to the public.###