| Noted
nature writer, scientist and activist to visit USU
January 23, 2006 | Carl Safina, winner of a "genius"
grant from the MacArthur Foundation, a noted nature
writer, scientist and activist, will deliver the Moyle
Q. Rice Lecture at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 at the Haight Alumni
Center.
Carl Safina grew up loving the ocean and its creatures.
His childhood by the sea led him into scientific studies
of seabirds and fish, and to his doctorate in ecology
from Rutgers University.
During his research and his recreational and part-time-commercial
fishing, he noticed rapid declines in white marlin,
sharks, tunas, sea turtles, and other fish. It seemed
to him as though a kind of last buffalo hunt was occurring
in the sea. This motivated him to become a voice for
the conservation and restoration of life in the oceans.
Since then, Dr. Safina has worked to put ocean fish
conservation issues into the wildlife conservation mainstream.
He has helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets,
re-write and reform federal fisheries law in the U.
S., use international agreements toward restoring depleted
populations of tunas, sharks, and other fish, and achieve
passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty.
In 1990 he founded the Living Oceans Program at the
National Audubon Society, where he served for a decade
as vice president for ocean conservation.
He is now president of Blue Ocean Institute,
which he co-founded in 2003. Blue Ocean Institute's
main focus is using science, art, and literature to
inspire a "sea ethic"-a closer relationship with the
sea.
Safina is author of more than a hundred scientific
and popular publications on ecology and oceans, including
a new Foreword to Rachel Carson's The Sea Around
Us. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean,
was chosen as New York Times Notable Book of
the Year, as Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction
selection, and as Library Journal Best Science
Book selection; it won him the Lannan Literary Award
for nonfiction. He is also author of Eye of the
Albatross, which won the John Burroughs Medal
for nature writing and was chosen by the National
Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine
as the year's best book for communicating science. Safina
is also co-author of the Seafood Lover's Almanac.
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