November 2007

TOPIC:  Song for a Blue Ocean: History and Destiny in World Fisheries

SPEAKER:  Carl Safina of the Blue Ocean Institute

WHEN:  Tuesday, November 13
Note: a week earlier than usual

TIME:  7:00 pm Program
Note: one half hour earlier than usual.

WHERE: Room 2650 Humanities (University Ave. and Park St.).

PARKING:  Lake Street Ramp, Helen White Library or Granger Hall

QUESTIONS?:  Please call the MAS office at (608)255-2473 if you have questions.

What do majestic, soaring albatrosses with seven-foot wingspans, agile bluefin tuna slicing through blue-green water, and mysterious leatherback turtles gently riding ocean currents, all have in common? Determination, for one. And the fact that they are all subjects of marine conservation biologist and ornithologist Dr. Carl Safina’s recent research.

Part science lecture, part biography, and part book-reading, Safina will use tuna, sharks, salmon and other examples to explore the issues of overfishing, bycatch, aquaculture, and human-altered habitats in our ocean ecosystems. He will examine the implications these changes mean for humans, and will also share signs of hope, as he discusses how people’s seafood choices can shape a new future of fisheries management and seafood consumption.

Madison Audubon is cosponsoring this program. The primary sponsor is the Arthur Hasler Center for Limnology at the UW-Madison.

Dr. Carl Safina is a prominent leader in ocean conservation policy, an award-winning distinguished author, Founder of the Living Oceans Program at the National Audubon Society where he served as vice president for a decade, and Co-Founder and President of the Blue Ocean Institute. He has helped revise and reform global fisheries policy. He has helped ban dangerous fisheries practices, overhauled U.S. federal fisheries laws, used international agreements to restore populations of apex predators, helped pass a United Nations global fishery treaty, and advised Congress in constructing the Sustainable Fisheries Act.

Dr. Carl Safina is author of over one hundred scientific and popular press publications on oceans and ecology, including his three most famous works: Song for the Blue Ocean, Eye of the Albatross, and Voyage of the Turtle, which have won him numerous awards including the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and the Jon Burroughs Medal for nature writing, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year award, a Library Journal Best Science Book award, a Los Angeles Times award for nonfiction, and selection by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine as the year’s best book for communicating science. Among his many honors and accomplishments, Audobon magazine named Dr. Carl Safina one of the “100 Notable Conservationists of the 20th Century.” He is a visiting fellow at Yale University, and an adjunct full professor at SUNY-Stony Brook. He is a World Wildlife Fund Senior Fellow, a Pew Fellow, and a MacArthur Fellow, and an Elected Member of the Explorers Club. In 2002 he appeared on the Bill Moyers PBS special “Earth on the Edge.” He has won the International Game Fish Association Conservation Award, the American Fisheries Society’s Carl R. Sullivan Conservation Award, the George B. Rabb Conservation Award from the Chicago Zoological Society, and recognition from Rutgers University as the most distinguished alumnus to graduate from their ecology and evolution program.