Changing Seas, Human Challenges: Bigelow Laboratory Café Scientifique in Rockland on May 24

Colin Woodard

Changing Seas, Human Challenges: Bigelow Laboratory Café Scientifique in Rockland on May 24


East Boothbay, Maine - Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and Know Technology, LLC are hosting a special Café Scientifique at the Strand Theater, 345 Main Street in Rockland, Maine at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 24, 2012. The event, titled Changing Seas, Human Challenges — A Conversation between a Scientist and a Journalist, will be a discussion with Bigelow Executive Director Dr. Graham Shimmield and journalist Colin Woodard, author of American Nations, The Lobster Coast, and Ocean’s End. Shimmield and Woodard will talk about current ocean issues and challenges including extraction pressures on the ocean for food, energy, and new products; ocean acidification as a result of climate change; and the effects of melting ice caps and harmful algal blooms such as red tides.

The informal discussion will highlight our evolving understanding of the ocean and the role of science in future ocean policy, and will focus on the consequences of environmental change, both in the Gulf of Maine and throughout the global ocean.

Know Technology is sponsoring a reception at the theater following the talk, with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. The event is free and open to the public.

Graham Shimmield

Before becoming Executive Director of Bigelow Laboratory in 2008, Graham Shimmield was director of the Scottish Association of Marine Science and the Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory in Scotland.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was Chairman of the European Census of Marine Life Program. As a marine geochemist, his research includes identifying indicators of ocean and climate change, and examining human impacts and contamination in coastal and deep seas. In October of last year, Mainebiz magazine named Shimmield to its Next List as one of “ten people shaping the future of Maine's economy.”

Author and reporter Colin Woodard is an investigative journalist and commentator for The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram and a member of Bigelow Laboratory's Board of Trustees. He worked as an award-winning correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents, and lived for over four years in Eastern Europe. He is a member of the Sea Space Symposium, an association of leading ocean and space explorers, scientists, policy makers, and philanthropists.

Know Technology is a Camden- and Portland-based company providing network system design and IT solutions, security, and support services for medium-sized businesses in New England and throughout the United States.

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences conducts research ranging from microbial oceanography to large-scale ocean processes that affect global environmental conditions. Recognized as a leader in Maine’s emerging innovation economy, the Laboratory is spurring significant economic growth in the state through construction of a major Ocean Science and Education Campus in East Boothbay.