November / December 2017

Thursday, December 7th, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Dr. Robert Schmieder

Over nearly 10 years, Dr. Schmieder and his group explored and described a rocky bank in the eastern Pacific (Cordell Bank), in support of its protection by designation as a national marine sanctuary. The Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary was designated in 1989 by an Act of Congress, signed by Pres. George H. W. Bush. In the course of this work, he published papers on the geological structure of the bank, on morphology and speciation of a resident gastropod, and on the impact of human activities on
the community, culminating with the book Ecology of an Underwater Island. A second monograph, Edward Cordell and the Discovery of Cordell Bank, is in press. During 1986-87, his team carried out a series of explorations of an unnamed bank off Pt. Sur, south of Monterey, California, resulting in the discovery of previously unknown topographic features and the largest known colonies of hydrocoral. This work resulted in the inclusion of sensitive areas within the proposed Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. In the late 1980s, his team explored the North Farallon Islands, resulting in the discovery of many new biological records and a previously
unknown (natural) submarine tunnel. Dr. Schmieder holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear
Physics from Columbia University and is the founder of Cordell Expeditions.

 

October 2017

Thursday, October 26th, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Dr. Patrick Robinson

Patrick Robinson is a UC Santa Cruz Lecturer and the Director of the Año Nuevo Island Reserve. He grew up in Colorado and moved to California to attend UC Santa Cruz. His research career started as a volunteer at Año Nuevo Island doing sea lion and elephant seal censuses. He was inspired to continue his education by obtaining a Ph.D. studying the foraging behavior of seals and sea lions using electronic tags such as time-depth recorders and GPS tags. This research has taken him all over the world, but to be leading research and outreach activities back at Año Nuevo, at the same place he started his own career! His primary interest is understanding how marine predators make a living in the open ocean. To do this, he works with a variety of researchers to attach biologging instruments to free-ranging seals and sea lions. His research questions include: 1) How do these animals navigate accurately across thousands of kilometers of feature-less ocean? 2) Where do these animals find the best prey resources? and 3) Can oceanographic features be used to predict where animals will find prey? Patrick has worked on a variety of species to help answer these questions, including northern elephant seals, California sea lions, Weddell seals, crabeater seals, and Galapagos sea lions. He will be speaking about elephant seals, pinnipeds, and Año Nuevo restoration efforts.

September 2017

How Plastic in the Oceans is Killing Whales (and Plenty of Other Sea Creatures)

Thursday, September 28th, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Erica Cirino

Erica Cirino is an international science writer and artist interested in exploring the human connection to nature – wild creatures in particular — in both her writing and art. In her work she explores the topics of wildlife and the environment; specializing in biology, conservation and policy. One of her major inspirations is her role as a licensed wildlife rehabber who has spent several years in the clinical setting. Through her writing, art and wildlife rehabilitation work, Erica hopes to foster human thought, conversation and, perhaps, admiration for the natural world. Erica has lived all over the world—on sailboats, and in apartments, tents, houses and cabins—in Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Hawaii, Thailand and more to cover varied international science stories. But she was born and raised in Long Island, New York, where she still has an apartment. Her immediate family includes her mother and 23-year-old brother, who are artists; her 9 year-old sidekick Foosa, an Alaskan malamute; and the lovable Rocky, a one-eyed 16 year-old tabby cat Erica has had since childhood.

August 2017

Exploring Our Greatest Frontier

Thursday, August 31st, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Kip Evans

Award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and explorer Kip Evans has led or participated in more than sixty expeditions throughout the world, including recent assignments in Spain, Costa Rica, Chile, and the Galapagos Islands. As a photographer, he has worked on dozens of National Geographic Society projects since 1998, including the five-year Sustainable Seas project to explore and document the U.S. National Marine Sanctuaries. Kip’s images have been featured in books, exhibits, calendars, advertisements, and magazines worldwide, including National Geographic magazine, Patagonia, and Outside. In 2014, Kip lived underwater for 17 days in the Aquarius underwater laboratory as an aquanaut with Mission 31. Since 2008, Kip has been the director of expeditions and photography for Mission Blue. Kip was recently honored as the 2017 Ocean Champion by the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival.
From the seamounts of the high seas to the shallow sunlit reefs, Kip will share some of his favorite moments during 25 years of undersea exploration.

 

June 2017

The Biomechanics of Breaching and Filter-Feeding: Using New Tools to Answer Old Questions

Thursday, June 29, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Megan Jensen

Megan Jensen’s research questions apply engineering principles and techniques to biological questions: what can we learn from data from tagged whales about how they breach? What can the structure of baleen plates teach us about filtration? This talk will focus on how modern technology — whale bio-logging devices, CT scanning, and 3D printing — is enabling us to answer old questions about breaching and baleen filtration in new ways.
Megan is an interdisciplinary scientist / engineer. Her undergraduate degree is in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of Michigan, and she worked designing ships for a US Navy contractor prior to her graduate school program in marine biology. She earned a PhD from Hopkins Marine Station, where she worked in Mark Denny’s lab and analyzed the effects of hydrodynamic forces from breaking waves on intertidal organisms. Megan is now a postdoc in Jeremy Goldbogen’s lab studying the biomechanics of breaching and filter-feeding.

May 2017

Leatherback Turtles in the California Current: Why Leatherbacks Cross the Pacific

Thursday, May 25, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Scott Benson

Scott Benson is the lead investigator of the leatherback turtle ecology program and coordinates studies of the distribution, abundance, movement patterns, foraging ecology, and health of endangered western Pacific leatherback turtles along the U.S. West Coast and throughout the Pacific. His research integrates bio-telemetry, aerial surveys, vessel-based sampling, and satellite remote sensing to enhance understanding of how oceanographic processes influence the occurrence and behavior of this species, and to aid U.S. and international conservation and recovery efforts. Since 1986, Scott has been involved in ecological research and conservation of marine vertebrates in the Pacific Ocean, including integrated studies of marine mammals and seabirds along the U.S. West Coast. Stationed at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, his education includes a B.A. from San Diego State University and an M.S. in Marine Science from San Jose State University.
Scott will discuss the declining populations of the Pacific Leatherback Sea Turtle, which have placed it on NOAA’s list of eight endangered species most at risk of extinction in the near future. He will also be discussing the endangered sea turtle’s biology, distribution, movements and foraging ecology.

April 2017
Sushi and Satellites: Tracking Marine Life in our Blue Serengeti 

Thursday, April 27, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Dr. Barbara Block

 

This month’s speaker comes from Hopkins Marine Station! Dr. Barbara Block will be speaking about her work with her talk titled: Sushi and Satellites: Tracking Marine Wildlife in our Blue Serengeti

Doors Open at 7pm for refreshments and the talk begins at 7:30pm. As always, our talks are open and free to the public.

Please find more information about our speaker listed below:
Dr. Barbara A. Block holds the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Professorship at Stanford University. Her research is focused on how large pelagic fish utilize the open ocean. She and her team have pioneered the successful development and deployment of electronic tags on tunas, billfishes and sharks that enable following these highly migratory fish in the oceans. Dr. Block is Co-founder of the only facility in North America holding tunas for research. The combination of lab and field research has led to a rapid increase in the understanding of movement patterns,
population structure, physiology and behaviors of pelagic fish and sharks as they move across the planet. Block and her tuna team have deployed over 2,300 electronic tags on tunas (bluefin, yellowfin and albacore) in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and
performed genetic and isotopic analyses that provide insight about physiology, migrations, population structure, ecology and management models for tunas in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
She earned her B.A. at the University of Vermont, and began her oceanographic career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1979 with Dr. Francis G. Carey.
She earned her Ph.D. in 1986 at Duke University and a postdoc at UPenn. Block and her team have published over 200 peer reviewed papers, and has received numerous awards. She is the 2016 recipient of the Benchley Award in Ocean Conservation.
Block has collaborated with networks on five films, and the newest, Blue Serengeti, has won several film festival awards and premiered on Discovery’s Shark Week. The film highlights the results from her White shark research program, and provides the
audience with her vision for creating a World Heritage Site off North America’s western shores.

March 2017
Blue Mind

Thursday, March 30, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Wallace J Nichols

Dr. Wallace “J.” Nichols is currently a Senior Fellow at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies’ Center for the Blue Economy, a Research Associate at California Academy of Sciences and co-founder of several non-profit organizations. He is an innovative, silo-busting, entrepreneurial scientist, movement maker, renown marine biologist, voracious Earth and idea explorer, wild water advocate, bestselling author, sought after lecturer, and fun-loving Dad. He also likes turtles (a lot).

To book Dr. Nichols as a speaker at your event or to organize a Blue Mind workshop for your organization, please email info@wallacejnichols.org.

 

February 2017
The role of krill in the food web

Thursday, February 23, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Dr. Baldo Marinovic

Dr. Baldo Marinovic, a research biologist at UCSC’s Institute of Marine Sciences, studies zooplankton ecology and the dynamics of ocean food webs.

Since 1997, he has been conducting surveys in Monterey Bay to understand what determines the distribution, abundance, and species composition of krill, tiny shrimp-like invertebrates that are a crucial link in the Bay’s food web.

Krill are an important food source for many species of fish and seabirds, as well as for the Bay’s largest visitors, the majestic blue, fin, and humpback whales.

Marinovic’s research has led to a better understanding of what makes Monterey Bay such a productive and biologically rich ecosystem.


January 2017
The (Not So) Secret Lives of Humpback Whales on their Breeding/Calving Grounds

Thursday, January 26, 2017
7 p.m. Refreshments, 7:30 p.m. Program
Lecture Hall, Monterey Boatworks, Hopkins Marine Station
Pacific Grove (Across from American Tin Cannery Outlet Stores)
Speaker: Jodi Frediani

Each year, humpback whales migrate from their temperate feeding grounds to the tropics where they breed and calve. However, no one has ever observed humpback whales mating or giving birth (well, maybe once off Madagascar). So what exactly do they do in those tropical waters? Join local wildlife photographer, Jodi Frediani, to learn more about humpback whale behavior when they are far away from Monterey Bay and their other feeding grounds.

Jodi will share her knowledge and observations gleaned from more than 11 months spent on calving grounds of the North Atlantic and South Pacific humpback whales. She’ll even include stories about individual whales she has come to know. Her presentation will be illustrated with her outstanding photographic images, taken both topside and underwater. Jodi’s passion for whales and photography is palpable and contagious. Come learn about competitive ‘rowdy’ groups, dancing whales, singers, and what moms and calves do during those long months when mom undertakes a total fast, while nursing junior.

Jodi Frediani worked for 35 years as an environmental forest and watershed consultant and animal trainer. Her passions include photography, animals and anything to do with water. She first picked up a camera at age 12 and has been photographing animals ever since. For the past 7 years, she has focused on marine species of Monterey Bay, and for the last 15 seasons Jodi has been swimming with and photographing the North Atlantic humpback whales in the warm waters of the Silver Bank Marine Mammal Sanctuary, Dominican Republic. She has also spent time swimming with and photographing humpback whales in Tonga.

Her images have been featured in local and regional papers, in national media such as The Atlantic and Wired.com, on BBC’s “Nature’s Weirdest Events” and in Carl Safina’s National Geographic blog, “Ocean Views.” Jodi’s work can be seen at www.jodifrediani.com.

Please join us for refreshments before the program begins.

Related link:

Jodi Frediani Photography