Plastic in the Global Ocean, Oct. 24

Southwestern Oregon Community College kicks off the Geology Lecture Series for the academic year on Saturday, October 25th at 7:00 pm with “Plastic in the Global Ocean” by Dr. Giora Proskurowski (University of Washington). This free lecture is at the Hales Center for the Performing Arts on Southwestern’s Coos campus and is open to all members of the community. Dr. Proskurowski graduated from Amherst College with a chemistry major, but was lured to the Earth sciences with the prospects of using the submersible Alvin to study hydrothermal vents. He received his master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Washington in chemical oceanography studying the connections between biology, geology, and chemistry at deep-sea hot vents. While deep-sea vents and upper-ocean plastics seem like very different research topics, they both require an interdisciplinary approach to understand the system as a whole. Giora has spent more than one year of his life in the middle of the ocean, five days of his life on the seafloor, and several months in the centers of the gyres in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. He has worked as a scientist and educator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Sea Education Association, and is currently at the University of Washington School of Oceanography. He splits his research efforts between open-ocean plastics, deep-sea vents, and building a fiber-optic cabled observatory in the northeast Pacific. Several local groups including Washed Ashore, Surfriders, South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve and Coos Watershed will be in the lobby starting at 6:00 pm and after the talk. All of the talks are free and start at 7:00 pm in the Hales Center for the Performing Arts on the SWOCC Campus in Coos Bay. For those not able to attend in person, all lectures are Livestreamed and archived, with access from the college website at www.socc.edu. Continuing sponsors of the lecture series include Oregon Resources Corporation, the SWOCC Foundation and the College. Additional talks scheduled in the series this year include: Dr. Patrick Fulton (UC Santa Cruz) on January 17th (special time: 2:00 pm) with the 10th annual Cascadia Anniversary earthquake talk; Dave Jewitt (UCLA) on March 7th with “Death from Space”; Dr. Joel Pederson (Utah State University) on Saturday, April 18th discussing geologic dating of Native American rock art and Dr. David Montgomery (UW) on May 16th with “The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood”. For additional information contact Ron Metzger at 541-888-7216.