2019 Symposium

“Are the oceans dying?” This question, posed on the cover of Newsweek in 2003, has been repeated with increasing frequency and alarm ever since. The planet has been facing marine environmental crisis for far longer than two decades, yet in recent years marine scientists have vastly increased our understanding of the challenges to ocean health. Overfished, polluted, warming, acidifying, and increasingly laden with plastic debris, the marine environment is in dire straits.

New research in marine science can improve our understanding of ocean health and point in new directions for research. The 2019 Clifford Symposium on The Future of the Global Ocean will feature a keynote address by Dr. Kara Lavender Law, Research Professor of Oceanography, Sea Education Association. Featured speakers Dr. Jennifer Francis (Woods Hole Research Center), Dr. Lisa Gilbert (Williams College), and Dr. Randi Rotjan (Boston University) will help us explore key environmental topics from marine protected areas and submarine thermal vents to ocean plastics and the influence of melting sea ice on continental weather patterns. The symposium will also host a screening of the documentary film Chasing the Thunder, which recounts a remarkable story of environmental activism on the high seas. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society head Paul Watson and filmmaker Mark Benjamin will introduce and answer questions about the film.

Schedule

Thursday, September 19

12:30 to 1:20 p.m.
“Science and Conservation in the Largest and Deepest UNESCO World Heritage Site on Earth: The Phoenix Islands Protected Area”

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, in the Republic of Kiribati, is the largest and deepest UNESCO World Heritage Site on the planet. It hosts a diversity of marine ecosystems, including shallow coral reefs, deep sea, and open ocean, and is an important climate laboratory because it is sensitive to El Niño/La Niña dynamics in the Central Pacific. This talk will explore the latest integrative and interdisciplinary science in a conservation context.

The Howard E. Woodin Environmental Studies Colloquium Series kicks off the Clifford Symposium with a talk by Randi Rotjan, research assistant professor at Boston University.

The Orchard, Hillcrest 103, Franklin Environmental Center

4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
“Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents and Volcanoes”

Talk by Lisa Gilbert, associate professor of geosciences and marine science at Williams-Mystic, Williams College

Most volcanoes on Earth are hard to reach because they are under more than a mile of water. Such extreme environments of pressure and temperature capture our imagination yet seem isolated from our daily existence. These volcanic oases where hot water circulates are crucial to heat and chemicals in the ocean and to life itself.

The Orchard, Hillcrest 103, Franklin Environmental Center

7:00 p.m.
“Reflections of an Ocean Plastics Scientist”

Plastic debris was first documented in the ocean more than 45 years ago, when global plastics production was only about 10 percent of its current levels. Today we use these materials in virtually all aspects of our daily lives, yet we are appalled when faced with images of our plastic waste in the ocean and in the stomachs of marine wildlife. This presentation will focus on the most current scientific evidence of environmental impacts of ocean plastics, as well as the role of science and environmental scientists in advancing solutions.

Clifford keynote by Kara Lavender Law, research professor of oceanography at the Sea Education Association.

McCullough Student Center, Wilson Hall

Friday, September 20

12:30 p.m.
“Whale Watching from the Masthead off New Zealand: Historic and Present Global Whale Populations and Shifting Perspectives on Extinction”

During the fall 2018 voyage of the SSV Robert C. Seamans off the coast of New Zealand—an SEA Global Ocean expedition that included two Middlebury students in the Class of 2020—researchers studied a uniquely careful whaleman’s journal from the 1850s and compared this man’s sightings of whales and other marine life to what they observed and sampled. Using data from the 1850s journal and their own voyage, they created a GIS map, studied shifts in global whale populations, and analyzed what 19th-century whalemen and the general public understood about the health of these populations and how this compares to our perspectives and hindsight knowledge today. This year marks the 200th birthday of Herman Melville, a whaleman himself and the author of Moby-Dick (1851), who had some surprising and often misguided thoughts on whale populations and extinction.

Panel discussion featuring Richard King, visiting associate professor at the Sea Education Association, and SEA students from Middlebury Jennifer Crandall ’20 and Caitlin Dicara ’20.

Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room

(Lunch served at 12:15, panel to start at 12:30)

4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
“Extreme Weather on the Rise, Arctic Ice on the Decline: How Are They Connected?”

Does it seem as though the weather gods have gone crazy lately? It is not your imagination. The question on everyone’s minds is, why? And is it related to climate change? In this presentation, Francis will explain new research that links increasing extreme weather events with the rapidly warming and melting Arctic during recent decades. Evidence suggests that Arctic warming is causing weather patterns to become more persistent, which can lead to extremes such as droughts, cold spells, heat waves, unusually snowy winters, and some flooding events.

Talk by Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Massachusetts.

The Orchard, Hillcrest 103, Franklin Environmental Center

7:00 p.m.
Chasing the Thunder

With compelling high-seas blue-water action, this eco-thriller is an antipoaching documentary that sees the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd’s vessels chasing the Thunder, the notorious pirate poacher, to the bottom of the sea.

Movie trailer and movie poster

Film screening, followed by a Q&A and discussion with marine conservation activist Captain Paul Watson and filmmaker Mark Benjamin.

Sunderland Language Center, Dana Auditorium

Saturday, September 21

9:30 a.m.
“Liberal Arts and the Global Ocean”

A panel discussion with faculty and students from the BIOL 371 Advanced Field Biology: Place-based Global Biology Education W’19. Students in this course conducted field-based scientific observation, sample and data collection, and interpretation of biological phenomena in coral reef environments on Abaco Island, Bahamas. The course deeply engaged in off-campus, place-based learning practicing population genetics, ecology, genomics, biogeochemistry, and site mapping via Rapid Ecological Assessment (REA) protocols. This work will contribute to ongoing active reef research with global reef conservation implications and many of these students are continuing to pursue related research opportunities.

Panelists are Jeremy Ward, Professor of Biology; Erin Eggleston, Assistant Professor of Biology; and Middlebury students Will Greene ’19, Luke Kikukawa ‘19.5, Helena Milazzo ’22, George Valentine ‘19.5

The Orchard, Hillcrest 103, Franklin Environmental Center

(Breakfast will be served in the Franklin Environmental Center breezeway, starting at 9:00 a.m.)

Presenter bios

Dr. Randi Rotjan, Research Assistant Professor, Boston University

Randi Rotjan is a research assistant professor at Boston University in the Biology Department and in the BU Marine Program. She received a BS from Cornell University and a PhD from Tufts University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. She spent eight years as an associate research scientist at the New England Aquarium, where she simultaneously held positions at UMass Boston and the Smithsonian Institution. She is the co-chief scientist of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) Conservation Trust, where she leads the science program for the world’s largest and deepest UNESCO World Heritage Site, a natural climate laboratory that is fully closed to all commercial extractive activities. Rotjan is also the founder and co-chair of the PIPA Scientific Advisory Committee. She is a member of Women Working for Oceans (W2O) and the Explorers Club and is a faculty associate at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. She is a member of the board of directors for the Nature Conservancy–Caribbean and the Friends of the Middlesex Fells. She lives in the Boston area with her two children and husband and a yard full of native plants.

Lisa Gilbert, Associate Professor, Geosciences and Marine Science at Williams-Mystic, Williams College

Lisa Gilbert studies undersea volcanoes. She is especially interested in how mid-ocean ridges, seamounts, and hydrothermal vents form. She gets to these volcanoes however she can: more than a mile underwater in a submarine; with cameras from a remotely operated vehicle; by bringing up cores from a drill ship; or by waiting for faults to bring these vents onto land. In 2018, she spent seven months in New Zealand studying a rare place where one such ancient mid-ocean ridge hydrothermal vent was carried by plate tectonics across long distances over millions of years and ended up in an intertidal zone. Gilbert is an associate professor of geosciences and marine science at Williams College and, since 2002, has taught at Williams-Mystic, the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport.

Kara Lavender Law, PhD, Research Professor of Oceanography, Sea Education Association

Kara Lavender Law is a research professor at Sea Education Association, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she studies the sources, distribution, behavior, and fate of plastic debris in the ocean. Law’s research focuses on the sources of plastic in the marine environment, how ocean physics determines the distribution of plastic debris, and the degradation and ultimate fate of different plastic materials in the ocean. She is co-chair of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) Working Group on FLOTSAM (Floating Litter and its Oceanic TranSport Analysis and Modelling), serves as the coprincipal investigator of the NCEAS Marine Debris Working Group, and holds a PhD in physical oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a BS in mathematics from Duke University.

Richard J. King, Visiting Associate Professor, Sea Education Association

Richard J. King is visiting associate professor at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He wrote Lobster, which was acclaimed by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and The Devil’s Cormorant: A Natural History, which was short-listed for the ASLE Creative Book Award and rated as one of the top five science books of 2013 by Library Journal. His newest book, Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick, is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press in October 2019. King is now working on an anthology of John James Audubon’s sea and coastal writings, titled Audubon at Sea, coedited with Christoph Irmscher.

Jennifer Francis, PhD, Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center

Jennifer Francis is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Previously she spent 24 years as a research professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, where she studied the Arctic climate system and how rapid Arctic change is affecting areas beyond the Arctic, particularly in terms of extreme weather in the Northern Hemisphere. She taught courses in satellite remote sensing and climate-change issues, and also cofounded and codirected the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative. Francis earned a BS in meteorology from San Jose State University in 1988 and a PhD in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington in 1994. During the early 1980s, she and her husband sailed around the world, including to the Arctic and Cape Horn, which is when her fascination with the weather and the Arctic began.

Captain Paul Watson

Captain Paul Watson is a marine conservation activist and one of the founding members of Greenpeace. In 1977, he left Greenpeace and founded the Sea Shepherd, which now has 10 steel-hulled vessels deployed globally. He was named one of the Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century by Time magazine, is in the Animal Rights Hall of Fame in Washington, and was awarded the Amazon Peace Prize and the Jules Verne Award. Preeminent protector of whales, ship captain, author, father, poet, and husband, Watson is a living legend and a distinguished fighter for this planet. Watson, wife Yana, and young son Tiger live in South Woodstock, Vermont.

Mark Benjamin

Mark Benjamin has won multiple awards over his 45-year filmmaking career. He began as a photojournalist and in 1973 transitioned to work as a combat cameraman for NBC News in the war in the Sinai Desert. Benjamin’s films have been awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance; the Camera d’Or at Cannes; multiple Peabody, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University, and Emmy Awards; and, most recently, the 2017 Best Series at the Jackson Wildlife Film Festival for Ocean Warriors, a six-hour crimes-against-the-ocean series broadcast in 50 countries. Chasing the Thunder, a 96-minute feature documentary, has screened in 200 cities globally and played at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and at INTERPOL in Lyon, France; was a finalist at the United Nations for World Wildlife Day; and has been winning additional awards on the festival circuit. Benjamin coproduced the final Bill Moyers film for PBS, Rikers: An American Jail, which won the RFK Media Advocacy Award. Benjamin founded Brick City TV (brickcitytv.com).

Erin Eggleston, Assistant Professor of Biology, Middlebury College

Erin Eggleston is a molecular microbial ecologist, meaning she uses molecular biological techniques to ask questions and gain insight into microbial ecology. She currently investigates bacteria and archaea involved in mercury methylation in St. Lawrence River wetland sediments.

Jeremy Ward, Albert D. Mead Professor of Biology, Middlebury College

Jeremy Ward, the Albert D. Mead Professor of Biology at Middlebury, attended Cornell University, where he majored in cell biology and genetics. He earned his PhD at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in cancer biology. He conducted his research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute, studying the molecular cause of acute promyelocytic leukemia. His postdoctoral work at the Jackson Laboratory focused on the genetic basis for accurate production of gametes during mammalian meiosis and reproduction. His current research interests include reproductive genetics in mammals and genetics in general in diverse systems, inclusive STEM education strategies, and the intersection of biotechnology and society. He is also involved in research identifying the prevalence of the Lyme disease causative agent, Borrelia burgdorferi, in ticks in Vermont; developing biosensors for B. burgdorferi; and studying the role of altitude in B. burgdorferi infection rates.

Dan Brayton, Professor of English and American Literatures, Middlebury College

Dan Brayton is the Julian W. Abernethy Chair of Literature and directs the Environmental Studies Program at Middlebury. His articles on early modern natural history, blue cultural studies, Shakespeare, and traditional boat building have been published in such journals and magazines as ELH, Forum for Modern Language Studies, and WoodenBoat. His book Shakespeare’s Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration (UVA, 2012) won the Northeast Modern Language Association Book Prize. He has taught sea literature and maritime history in sailing vessels on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Caribbean Sea.

Clifford Symposium

2019 Symposium

The Future of the Global Ocean

September 19-21, 2019

Dr. Randi Rotjan

Dr. Lisa Gilbert

Dr. Kara Lavender Law

Dr. Richard King, Jennifer Crandall ’20, Caitlin Dicara ‘20

Dr. Jennifer Francis

Dr. Jeremy Ward, Dr. Erin Eggleston, Will Greene ‘19, Luke Kikukawa ’19.5, Helena Milazzo ‘22, George Valentine ’19.5

Thursday, September 19

Friday, September 20

Saturday, September 21

Dr. Randi Rotjan, Research Assistant Professor, Boston University

Lisa Gilbert, Associate Professor, Geosciences and Marine Science at Williams-Mystic, Williams College

Kara Lavender Law, PhD, Research Professor of Oceanography, Sea Education Association

Richard J. King, Visiting Associate Professor, Sea Education Association

Jennifer Francis, PhD, Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center

Captain Paul Watson

Mark Benjamin

Erin Eggleston, Assistant Professor of Biology, Middlebury College

Jeremy Ward, Albert D. Mead Professor of Biology, Middlebury College

Dan Brayton, Professor of English and American Literatures, Middlebury College