Friday night speaker - SWU

[SShindell]

I had to repost this thread that Chris (Mojo) just posted about our Friday speaker on www.saltwateru.com - it is pretty cool:


Rusty Brainard, Ph.D.
Rusty Brainard has a diverse and interesting background as an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the past 25 years. Since 2000, Rusty has been Chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED) of NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu. The CRED leads an integrated, multi-disciplinary, ecosystem-based program of research, benthic habitat mapping, and long-term ecological monitoring of the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands to promote conservation and management. This work involves conducting biennial Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program cruises to each of the 55 islands and atolls in Hawaii (main Hawaiian Islands and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands), American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Pacific Remote Island Areas (Wake, Johnston, Palmyra, and Kingman Atolls, Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands). These Pacific RAMP surveys monitor the fish, corals, other invertebrates, and algae in the context of their varying benthic and oceanographic habitats.
In a related activity, Rusty serves as co-Principal Investigator of the Census of Coral Reef Ecosystems (CReefs) project of the International Census of Marine Life. Initiated in 2005, CReefs aims to conduct a taxonomically-diversified census of coral reef ecosystem biodiversity at representative sites around the globe. In October 2006, Rusty will be Chief Scientist for the first CReefs census at French Frigate Shoals in the remote NWHI.
Following his degree in Marine Sciences from Texas A&M University in 1981, Rusty was commissioned as an ensign in the NOAA Corps, where he served until 2002, when he retired as a Commander. During his 21 years of service as a NOAA Corps officer, Rusty served as navigation officer aboard the NOAA ship DISCOVERER, master aboard the R/V KARLUK, and field operations officer and commanding officer aboard the NOAA ship TOWNSEND CROMWELL. These sea assignments provided Rusty exciting opportunities to participate in varied types of ocean research around much of the Pacific Ocean, including biological, geological, and physical oceanographic surveys in Alaska, California, the equatorial Pacific from Equator to the Marshall Islands, and many of the remote islands and atolls of the central, western, and South Pacific. These sea assignments afforded extensive opportunities to nurture Rusty’s life long passion for diving and exploration of the underwater world. Though he primarily conducts towed diver surveys of shallow coral reefs around the Pacific Islands, Rusty’s diving experiences include Trimix surveys in the NWHI to depths as deep as 240’.
Rusty’s shore assignments during his career in the NOAA Corps included serving as station chief of NOAA’s Geophysical Monitoring for Climatic Change South Pole Observatory, where he wintered-over at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (1982-83); serving as a research oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Fisheries Environmental Group (PFEG) in Monterey (1984-87); serving as a research oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environnmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle (1990-94); and serving as research oceanographer at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu (1997-2002). While working at PFEG and PMEL, Rusty completed his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in oceanography and physical oceanography from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1986 and 1994, respectively.
At the South Pole, Rusty monitored atmospheric gases (CO2, ozone, halocarbons, methane, etc.) and observed physical processes influencing the earth’s climate. Rusty loved the adventure of the Antarctic environment, even the opportunity to be initiated into the 300o Club by heating his naked body in the station sauna and racing outside into the winter cold and darkness around the geographic South Pole on the first day that the temperature cools to less than minus 100oF.
At PFEG, Rusty’s research focused on oceanographic processes influencing the marine ecosystems along the west coast of the Americas from Alaska to Chile. He also examined the role of oceanographic processes in maintaining high fishery production over Southeast Hancock Seamount at the southern end of the Emperor Seamounts of the subtropical North Pacific. While at PMEL, Rusty examined the variability of high frequency internal waves and associated mixing along the equator and the role of these processes on modulating El Nino climate events.
Rusty is happily married to his wife Bonnie, a historian and teacher, and is the proud father of daughters Saylor (age 4) and Seychelle (age 2). They enjoy living in Kaneohe, Hawaii and sailing their boat ZIZUMARA around the Hawaiian Islands. At various points during his career, Rusty has enjoyed three trans-Pacific voyages and looks forward to many more ocean crossings as his daughters grow older.
Friday night Gala Presentation Title: What Lies Beneath
Saturday Presentation Title: Integrated observations for the Conservation of coral reef ecosystems

[SShindell]

Michael H. Cottman
Cottman is an award-winning journalist and author, is a Senior Political Writer for REACH Media/Radio One, the nation’s largest black-owned media company.
Cottman, a former reporter for The Washington Post, Newsday and The Miami Herald, is also presently a lecturer in the Department of Journalism at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In addition, Cottman offers political commentary and news analysis for several Radio One stations.
Cottman has spent the past 25 years reporting about politics, social trends and America’s expanding multi-cultural society. In addition to covering the 2004 presidential campaign, Cottman has interviewed and written about some of the world’s most prominent news makers, including former South African President Nelson Mandela, the late John F. Kennedy Jr., historian John Hope Franklin, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Cottman has worked for some of the nation’s top newspapers, including The Washington Post, Newsday, The Miami Herald and The Atlanta Constitution. In addition to writing for newspapers, Cottman also co-wrote a screenplay for Showtime Television Networks, and is presently at work on his next book.
He has received numerous awards including journalism’s highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize, which he shared with a team of reporters at Newsday in 1992.
Cottman is the author of three books, including The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie, (Crown/Random House) the story of a sunken 17th Century slave ship that sank off the coast of Key West, and the black scuba divers who helped explore the 300-year-old vessel. Cottman spent four years researching the origin of the slave ship and retracing the route of Henrietta Marie, traveling to every port of call and scuba diving inlets where the ship anchored.
Cottman traveled to three continents to reconstruct the slaving voyages of the Henrietta Marie and, as a certified scuba diver, helped explore the remains of the vessel which yielded 20,000 artifacts, including the largest collection of slave-ship shackles ever found on one site. It is the only sunken slave ship in the world to be scientifically documented. In 1972, the Henrietta Marie was originally discovered by a group of treasure salvagers, which included a black underwater treasure hunter. The artifacts are currently part of a traveling exhibit in Austin, Texas.
In 1993, Cottman was part of a group of black scuba divers that placed a one-ton monument on the site of the slave ship to commemorate the African people who died aboard the Henrietta Marie and those lost during the Middle Passage. Today, the monument is the only underwater memorial of its kind in the nation.
A bronze plaque is embedded on the concrete monument. The inscription reads:
Henrietta Marie: In memory and recognition of the courage, pain and suffering of enslaved African people. Speak her name and gently touch the souls of our ancestors.
Cottman, who has logged dozens of dives on the slave-ship site, co-sponsors annual trips to the wreck of the Henrietta Marie for certified divers. The site is protected by several federal marine agencies. In June 2005, Cottman joined several NABS members in taking a group of public school students to the Henrietta Marie site, marking the first time black students had visited the wreck.
His journalism travels have taken him across the United States reporting on social conditions in communities from Miami to Los Angeles. He has also reported from Africa, France, the U.K., Japan, Malaysia and The Caribbean. In 1998, Cottman traveled to Dakar, Senegal to write about President Bill Clinton’s historic trip to Africa, the most extensive visit to Africa by a U.S. President.
Cottman also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2000 to discuss his book, The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie. He has also appeared on CNN; NPR; PBS; C-SPAN Booknotes; ABC News and CBS News affiliates, The Learning Channel and The History Channel.
Cottman frequently lectures about journalism, African-American history, contemporary social issues and underwater exploration at universities, public schools, churches and museums.
They include: The Smithsonian; NASA; The Getty Foundation; the Dusable Museum of Chicago; Wayne State University; The Junior League of Richmond; the National Association of Black Genealogists; the Detroit African-American History Museum; The Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Science; the National Aquarium in Baltimore, The Boston Aquarium; Howard University, Clark Atlanta University, The University of North Carolina, Virginia Tech University, The Little Rock Museum of History, the Augusta Museum of History, The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture and National Museums Liverpool, Liverpool, England.
Cottman belongs to a number of professional associations, including The Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, and the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. Cottman was certified as an Advanced Open Water scuba diver in 1991 by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI).
Presentation Title: Slave Ship: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie. Abstract: Presentation of the facts and images of the slave ship, artifacts and underwater archaeology of the Henrietta Marie

[SShindell]

Walt Smith, Bruce Carlson, Martin Moe, Anthony Calfo, Eric Borneman, Steven Pro, Bob Fenner, Bob Hueter......

It doesn't get much better than this. I really don't know of any conference that has ever had this wonderful of a cast of characters...sign up now!

Steve

[THE HIT MAN]

Sweet line up we have hit the BIG time now!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Margi]

It is quite nice when other EXPERTS are impressed with the line-up! I have been calling and talking with a LOT of people regarding SaltwaterU TWO - and the fact that we had people like Dr. Sylvia Earle last year and people like Dr Rusty Brainard and Michael Cottman - as well as all of the others this year - really makes us stand out.