The Growing Crisis In Our Oceans: The Rise of Mysterious Outbreaks of Infectious Disease
A Virtual Conversation with
Dr. Drew Harvell, author of Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease
Monday, May 16, at 7 PM EDT on Zoom
Science Writers in New York is pleased to present Drew Harvell, PhD (@DrewHarvell), emeritus professor at Cornell and an affiliate professor at University of Washington. Dr. Harvell will speak with SWINY co-chair David Levine (@dlloydlevine) about how marine epidemics can cause mass die-offs of wildlife from the bottom to the top of food chains, impacting the health of ocean ecosystems as well as lives on land. Portending global environmental disaster, ocean outbreaks are fueled by warming seas, sewage dumping, unregulated aquaculture, and drifting plastic.
Dr. Harvell warned of these dangers in her book Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease. The book follows Dr. Harvell and her colleagues into the field as they investigate how four iconic marine animals—corals, abalone, salmon, and starfish—have been devastated by disease. Based on over 20 years of research, this firsthand account of the sometimes gradual, sometimes exploding impact of disease on our ocean’s biodiversity ends with solutions and a call to action.
Ocean Outbreak won the 2020 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America as well as the 2020 PROSE Award (Biological Sciences category) from the Association of American Publishers.
About Dr. Drew Harvell
Drew Harvell, PhD, is an emeritus professor at Cornell University and an affiliate professor at University of Washington. She received her PhD from University of Washington in 1985. Her research on host-pathogen interactions and the sustainability of marine ecosystems has taken her from the reefs of Mexico, Indonesia, and Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest.
The current focus of Dr. Harvell’s laboratory group is on sustainable marine biodiversity and the ecology of host-pathogen interactions in a changing ocean. A sub-theme of this work includes evaluating the impacts of a warming climate on marine ecosystems. Her analyses and papers have led to the now widespread acceptance that diseases are restructuring marine ecosystems, from very climate-sensitive coral reef ecosystems to rocky temperate shores.
Projects in Dr. Harvell’s lab involve multidisciplinary, cross-scale approaches, including field studies, remote sensing, genetic and transcriptomics, chemical analyses, and mathematical modeling. She leads an NSF Research Coordination Network on Ecology of Infectious Marine Disease. She is a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, a winner of the Society of American Naturalists Jasper Loftus-Hills Award, and a lead author of the oceans chapter in the U.S. Climate Change Assessment. Her writing appears in The New York Times, The Hill and in over 180 academic articles in journals such as Science, Nature, and Ecology.
Have a question for Dr. Harvell you would like answered? Submit it here!
When:
Monday, May 16
7 to 8 pm EDT
Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YyMpguz7Q3SVU8KZwVLNXw
