Nainoa Thompson

Sunday, 16 February 2020
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Location TBD

Nainoa Thompson is the first Native Hawaiian in 600 years to practice the ancient Polynesian art of navigation: long-distance open-ocean voyaging on a traditional double-hulled canoe without the aid of modern instruments. His work has led to a renewed understanding and revival of traditional voyaging arts lost for centuries due to the disappearance of such travel methods and the colonization and Westernization of the Polynesian archipelagoes. As the president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), a non-profit research and educational organization, Thompson recently completed a four-year voyage around the world on the Hōkūleʻa, a traditional, double-hulled voyaging canoe. Through these travels, Thompson and his crew engaged with thousands of people, including world leaders to highlight the importance of ocean resources, cultural legacies, and protection of these critical places in the future. Read Nainoa Thompson’s full bio.

Heidi Sosik and Erik van Sebille

Tuesday, 18 February 2020
Time: 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Location TBD

Heidi Sosik is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and currently holds the Stanley W. Watson Chair for Excellence in Oceanography. A biological oceanographer and inventor, Sosik and her co-workers have developed automated underwater analyzers that dramatically enhance scientists’ and resource managers’ ability to study microscopic organisms that fuel ocean food chains, interact with Earth’s climate, and sometimes produce harmful algal blooms that threaten ecosystem and human health. View Heidi Sosik’s full bio. 

Erik van Sebille is a physical oceanographer at Utrecht University. He studies the pathways and timescales on which ocean currents transport water, nutrients, planktonic organisms and pollution such as plastic. Van Sebille is the lead of the European Research Council-funded Tracking of Plastic in our Seas (TOPIOS) project with the goal to create a 3D map of marine plastic pollution and track it back to its sources. He has a passion for science communication, having done more than 300 interviews about plastic pollution and advised UK Parliament and the European Commission on the problem’s scale. He was recently named as a 2019 James B. Macelwane Medalist. View Erik van Sebille’s full bio.