[Coral-List] Coral Diving Award

[Szmant, Alina]

I'd nominate David Doubilet long-time photographer of the National Geographic.  Not a scientist but an astute observer who thinks about what he sees as he photographs it.  He has been everywhere photographing coral reefs and other UW systems for at least 30 years.  His incredible photographic records may be all we have left in a few decades to remind us of what things were like when we first started diving and couldn't afford good cameras.


**********************************************
Dr. Alina M. Szmant
Professor of Marine Biology
Coral Reef Research Program, Center for Marine Science
University of North Carolina Wilmington
5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane
Wilmington NC 28409
Tel:  (910)962-2362; fax: (910)962-2410;  cell:  (910)200-3913
http://people.uncw.edu/szmanta
**********************************************
________________________________________
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov [coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml..noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Bill Allison [allison.billiam at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 10:58 AM
To: Jim Hendee
Cc: Coral-List Subscribers
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Coral Diving Award

The implications could be interesting:

http://www.undercurrent.org/blog/2009/12/22/shrunken-brain-from-scuba/

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Jim Hendee <jim.hendee at noaa.gov> wrote:
> Greeting again...
>
>    As the subject of a good story and for purposes of a follow-up
> award, Dave Fuzzo has asked if he could query Coral-List subscribers to
> determine who has dived longer and in more places than any coral
> scientist.  He will follow-up in January, but for the time being, I
> guess some of the qualifiers we can think of are:
>
>    * Does "any coral scientist" include deceased divers?  Like, does
>      Jacques Cousteau pass muster?
>    * Which leads to the next question:  How do we define "scientist?"
>      Peer-reviewed publications?  What about those folks who dive
>      thousands of hours on, say, the GBR for the benefit of the
>      science, but themselves don't publish?  I know guys who dive every
>      single week of the year, and they have an education in marine
>      biology or oceanography, but they don't publish.
>    * When considering places dived, does that include repeat dives, or
>      unique sites, and if so, what about spatial separation of said
>      sites?  (Like, does a dive 100 m down the beach count?)
>    * What constitutes the proof for purposes of the Award?  Logged
>      dives in an official log for, say, PADI?
>    * Should there be an official end date for the tally (say, June, 2010)?
>    * What should the name of the Award be?
>
>    Whoever "wins" almost doesn't matter, because the stories that will
> come out of this would be accounts of some great adventures and some
> nice chronicles in coral reef research.  The top head-soakers, whoever
> they may be, certainly deserve recognition, that's for sure, and I hope
> they get international recognition beyond what they might already have.
> After all, it's a significant risk with every dive, as TG could
> certainly attest.
>
>    Just some thoughts for the coming weeks...
>
>    Cheers,
>    Jim
>
>
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