Sea Secrets Lecture Series 2022

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SIX LECTURES ESSENTIAL TO YOUR CALENDAR

WE ARE EXTREMELY GRATEFUL TO OUR SPONSORS

The Shepard Broad Foundation William J. Gallwey III, Esquire Sheryl Gold Key Biscayne Community Foundation

KB Life Enhancement Forum Joan McCaughan Family Foundation The William J. McKeehan Trust Nicole and Myron Wang

To become a sponsor of Sea Secrets call 305-421-4061.

LEADING EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE. TRANSFORMING LIVES AND MINDS. Established in 1943, the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science unites cutting-edge technology with top-notch minds to tackle global challenges, including weather, climate, sea level rise, hurricanes, marine conservation and sustainable aquaculture. Through transformational research, dynamic interdisciplinary academics and support for the establishment of sound environmental policy, we explore the Earth’s great mysteries, improve the quality of human life and educate tomorrow’s leading scientists.

Join us as we travel the world with distinguished scientists and explorers at the edge of discovery during this series of evening programs designed for the non-scientific community.

All lectures will take place at the UM Rosenstiel School and will be shown virtually.

In-person events will be hosted in accordance with the latest CDC guidelines, local government regulations, and/or University guidelines; all subject to change due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to these restrictions, we can only host an in-person audience of half the auditorium’s usual capacity. We will not be providing a complimentary reception before the lectures.

To register for one or more lectures, please go to the link for each speaker.

For further information, email: events@rsmas.miami.edu or call 305-421-4061 PROGRAMS: 7:00 PM, Rosenstiel School Auditorium,4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Virginia Key, FL 33149 (January program is virtual)

SAM PURKIS, Ph.D.

Beauty and Peril in the Red Sea Tuesday, January 18, 2022 Program 7:00pm

This lecture will be virtual only due to current University COVID restrictions

Professor and Chair, Department of Marine Geosciences, UM Rosenstiel School Termed a maritime rift, the Red Sea is unique on the modern Earth and an excellent analog to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean as the supercontinent Pangea broke up beginning about 200 million years ago. Rifts represent a perfect natural laboratory in which to study plate movements, and because the deep, narrow basins that they produce represent a rare biosphere. The coral reefs which inhabit the Red Sea, for instance, are remarkable in their diversity and resiliency to climate change. The Red Sea’s beauty is balanced by peril, however. The steep sides of the rift basin are fragile, seismically active, and submarine landslides can spawn tsunamis as large as those of Earth’s most powerful earthquakes. Whereas the arid coastline of the Red Sea was sparsely inhabited in antiquity, it is now urbanizing rapidly, and there is compelling urgency to understand the natural hazards that accompany Earth’s only maritime rift basin.

Dr. Purkis’ research currently focuses on fundamental questions about the health and resilience of coral reefs. In particular, the role that spatial self-organization plays in their patterning and architecture. Beyond better understanding the processes that sculpt reefs, his work also strives to develop pragmatic tools for ocean conservation - from satellite and aircraft observation, marine acoustics, GIS, carbonate geology, coral reef ecology, software development, and mathematical simulation. Dr. Purkis has authored three books and more than 120 publications.

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Here Be Monsters: Exploring the Edge of the Map Tuesday, February 8, 2022 Program 7:00pm

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Oceanographer, Marine Biologist; Co-Founder and CEO, Senior Scientist at the Ocean Research & Conservation Association The focus will be on how little of our world we have actually explored. A case in point is the giant squid. How is it possible that a creature as tall as a four story building could have gone so long unobserved in its natural habitat? To be able to adapt to this changing world we need to do what humans have always done – explore the world around us in order to learn how best to survive in it.

Lecture followed by a book signing supported by Books & Books.

Dr. Widder is a MacArthur Fellow, deep-sea explorer and conservationist. A world authority on marine bioluminescence, she has racked up hundreds of dives in deep diving submersibles. She has helped develop new tools for deep sea exploration that have produced observations of animals and behaviors never seen before, including the first video recording of a giant squid in its natural habitat. Dr. Widder has authored over 100 scientific papers and, in 2021, a book, Below the Edge of Darkness:

A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea. She has also spearheaded the development of water quality monitoring systems and new methods of mapping pollution.

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EDITH WIDDER, Ph.D.

SHIMON ELKABETZ

Weather Intelligence: Climate Security is the New Cyber Security Thursday, February 17, 2022 Program 7:00pm

CEO and Co-Founder, Tomorrow.io (formerly Climacell), the world’s leading weather and climate security platform As extreme weather becomes more frequent and more volatile, the need for more accurate forecasts in every part of the world becomes more important than ever. However, forecasts are not enough, and we need to put systems in place to adapt to the changing climate. Mr. Elkabetz will share what is being done to address this massive challenge, what organizations around the world can do to manage the risk of extreme weather events and what industry solutions are created to address the growing concern.

Shimon Elkabetz served in the Israeli Air Force for 11 years in several managerial and commanding positions. Multiple near-death, weather-related experiences during his service stoked a fascination with the weather, that little thing that affects us all. He’s also passionate about soccer and can recall any statistic whether you ask him to or not. Mr. Elkabetz holds a BA in economics from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on global climate security and weather intelligence.

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Reading and Writing the Genetic Code of Marine Life to Cure Human Disease Tuesday, March 15, 2022 Program 7:00pm

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Distinguished Professor, Director, Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography & the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC San Diego All organisms on land and in the sea are expert chemists. In a competitive and crowded world, they depend on their specialized chemicals to perform specific life functions central to reproduction, defense, and communication. Many of these same natural chemicals perfected through time have become drugs to cure human disease. As all of nature’s chemical wonders are encoded in DNA, a new era of scientific discovery has emerged to mine genomes to discover and create new medicine in the laboratory. Some of the chemically most vibrant organisms with the least understood genomes are from the sea, including microbes, algae, and sessile animals. Dr. Moore will present his chemical genomics research to translate the genetic code of marine life to supply new drug candidates to treat disease.

Bradley Moore is a biochemist who specializes in reading and writing the genetic code of marine microbes, algae, and sessile animals to develop new ocean-based medicines and molecular tools to treat human disease. His laboratory pioneered the mining of genomes to discover gene networks that code for natural, bioactive chemicals that support the specialized lifestyles of marine organisms. This work has led to new medicines and new gene tools to monitor oceanic toxins. Dr. Moore has published over 240 peer-reviewed articles and has been recognized by the National Institutes of Health, the American Chemical Society, the American Academy of Microbiology, and other scientific societies.

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BRADLEY MOORE, Ph.D.

VED CHIRAYATH, Ph.D. Revealing the Ocean Deep: Next Generation Sensing Technologies for Marine and Planetary Science Tuesday, April 5, 2022 Program 7:00pm

Director of Aircraft Center for Earth Studies (ACES) and G. Unger Vetlesen, Chair of Earth Studies, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science We have mapped more of the surface of the Moon and Mars than our own ocean floor—but that is changing. Professor Chirayath will present three remote sensing technologies he invented while at NASA. FluidCam is an instrument that can be used from satellites and aerial drones to map shallow marine environments, such as coral reefs, at unprecedented resolution in 3D. MiDAR is a multispectral instrument used to sense living creatures and nonliving structures in light-limited environments.

NeMO-Net is a machine-learning video game that teaches citizen scientists to classify coral reefs using real data from FluidCam & MiDAR. Together, these technologies will help us better understand Earth’s marine environments while furthering the search for life on other planets.

Ved Chirayath is a former NASA scientist. As a teenager, he discovered a planet and moved to Russia to study astrophysics.

He earned a Bachelor’s in Physics and a Master’s and Doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. His inventions include aircraft that fly on electric fields and instruments that map oceans. Presently, he is mapping our ocean floor, especially coral reefs and shallow marine ecosystems. Dr. Chirayath is a 2021 National Geographic Emerging Explorer and received the American Geophysical Union’s 2020 Charles S. Falkenberg Award and the NASA Early Career for “significant advances in aquatic remote sensing technology.”

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The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans Tuesday, April 19, 2022 Program 7:00pm

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Environmental Journalist in Residence, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida; and author.

Cynthia Barnett explores the long, rich and surprisingly profound relationship between humans and seashells. Traveling from Florida to the Bahamas to the Maldives, West Africa, and beyond, Barnett examines the ancient history of shells as global currency, their use as religious and luxury objects, and the remarkable marine mollusks that make them. For eons, shells and their makers have reflected humanity’s shifting attitudes toward and precarious place in the natural world. While shells reveal how humans have altered the climate and the sea—down to its very chemistry—they are also sentinels of hope for human ingenuity and the scientific solutions they represent for our warming world.

Lecture followed by a book signing supported by Books & Books.

Cynthia Barnett is an award-winning environmental journalist who has reported on water and climate worldwide. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. She is the author of four books including Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, which was long listed for the National Book Award; and her latest, The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans.

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CYNTHIA BARNETT