May 24th, 2010 
The Revolution of Science Through SCUBA, a symposium “to celebrate the scientific contributions and value of scuba as research methodology,” will be webcast live Monday and Tuesday. The agenda is really impressive – it’s pretty much a who’s who in SCUBA-related underwater research.
Some of my personal highlights include Larry Madin, who pioneered blue-water diving to observe gelatinous animals in their natural habitat, Paul Dayton, who used SCUBA to understand the ecology of Pacific kelp forests and the Antarctic sea floor, and my undergraduate advisor Jon Witman, who dives on rock walls in the Galapagos to understand how large-scale oceanography affects the food web. (Yes, I got to with him once. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, I sometimes regret going all open-ocean and not being able to dive for work anymore!)
If you’re not convinced that this will be awesome, here’s a little taste of Paul Dayton talking about what it was like to dive in Antarctica back in the day. Tune in for more amazing stories.
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How timely for me! I’m getting Open Water certified in July so’s I can dive Channel Islands kelp forests as part of an educational DNA barcoding course I’m shadowing. I know, poor me.
A bit surprise to not see Richard Pyle in the line up…
Great!
I’ll be following this intently. I became a CMAS scuba instructor back in 1975 in Brazil. The Rio Santos highway had not yet been built and that entire stretch of coastline was still pristine. I dove quite a bit of it back then. I later went on to work for Big Oil after being trained as a Hyperbaric Tech and saturation diver certified 500ft by Sub Sea Oil in Italy. That was considered deep back then… Today I live in Florida and still dive the coral reefs from my Kayak.
I am very fortunate to live near one of the few remaining Staghorn Coral reefs if Florida.
“So we are very fortunate to have one of the largest and healthiest remaining staghorn coral stands in Florida, right off of the beaches of Fort Lauderdale.”
Lee Edmiston
DEP Director Office of Coastal and Aquatic Managed Areas (CAMA)
Wonderful that the video is recorded and available online.
Yes, I think Dr. Pyle would be of great value for this conference. Found some material of him in TED.com. You can find it here: http://tecrec-ecuador.blogspot.com/2010/04/richard-pyle-on-deep-underwater.html
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