Edith Widder visits NMH
NMH is very lucky today and yesterday to have had oceanographer, deep sea explorer, scientist, conservationist, and Genius fellowship recipient Edith Widder on campus.
Edith spoke on Tuesday evening about her “favorite” subject Bioluminescence. She explained her deep sea adventures and dives on “submersibles”, (small man-operated submarine suits). She also showed clips of bioluminescent fish that when touched squirted blobs of bright blue fluid that lit-up the whole fish tank. She successfully employed the wow-factor of these biologically astounding animals and their functions to draw the audiences attention to conservation efforts.
Her Ocean research and conservation non-profit is called ORCA, and has been doing significant things since 2005. Most noted, they discovered an entire new family of deep sea squid in the gulf of Mexico. Now they are focused on a way to make water pollution visible by chemical-gradient tracking systems and measuring devices called “Kilroys”. This work is incredibly innovative and will be imperative to the efforts of The Clean Water Act.
Today, Wednesday, Widder spoke to the entire school assembly about The BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She had used the gulf as a habitual research site until the spill. She also served on the ONLY government clean-up panel that was not under complete BP control. She mentioned the continual damage from the spill today, and the dispersant called “Corexit” that BP sprayed to disperse some of the oil. This dispersant, another chemical has worsened the ecological situation. Friends of Widders- a group of divers exposed to the “Corexit” are in critical medical condition.
Widder was down-to-earth and shared her passions for the sea and its glowing beings with candor.
Check her out:
ORCA: http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/home.cfm
Widder gives a TEDx talk in part of their Mission Blue Voyage series: http://www.ted.com/speakers/edith_widder.html
NMH should do something like this for Earth Day!
Can the Ecoleaders organize ourselves and our Network of friends fast enough before tmrw (EARTHDAY!) comes?
Play-by-play of an Ecoleader meeting.
At 7:00 pm every Wednesday The NMH Ecoleaders gather in the Basement of the Cutler Science Building to review our work for the past week, discuss sustainable current events on campus and off within the league of 8 preparatory schools, and organize ourselves for next week’s work.
This evening Becca Leslie (head of Ecoleaders and NMH’s Sustainability Coordinator) told Kyra, Sam, and Sierra about the 30-acre solar panel field that Lawrenceville in New Jersey is about to construct.
Hughes Pack stopped in to admire Sam’s plan for a walking tour of “Sustainable NMH”.
League of Conservation Photographers
This group of talented photographers have formed a coalition to capture images of nature at its best and worst. They then publicize these photos, hoping to capture the attention of the people and mainstream media. They depend on the visual potency inherent in photographs, not only do photos contain a thousand words but they appeal to our humanity in an instant, piercing, and beautiful way.
