The Skidompha Public Library’s Chats with Champions Committee is pleased to announce marine scientist Dr. Rhian Waller will be the featured speaker at 10 a.m. on April 24.
Waller’s appearance is rescheduled from December 2013 when it was postponed due to a schedule conflict.
She will be speaking and showing slides of her work on deep sea corals and how they are being affected by environmental challenges. The venue for the program is the library’s Porter Meeting Hall, 184 Main St., Damariscotta. Attendees should plan their arrival to allow time for parking.
Dr. Waller is a marine scientist recently heralded in the March issue of National Geographic magazine as a risk taker in “The New Age of Exploration.” Waller has “pressed the limits” according to the magazine, with her diving during more than 40 expeditions around the planet.
She has plunged to a depth of 3,600 meters in a submersible looking for corals on the New England Seamount in 2005.
Her research focuses on how environmental factors such as climate change, fishing and oil exploration affect deep-sea coral ecology and reproduction and the effect that an altered life cycle could have on all marine ecosystems.
Waller is an Associate Research Professor of Marine Science at the Darling Marine Center, University of Maine, in Bristol. Educated originally in Wales, she received her PhD. at the Southampton Oceanography Center in the U.K. She received a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod.
From there she went to an academic position at the University of Hawaii but spent most of those three years in the Antarctic doing research.
Waller was recently voted into The Explorers Club as a Fellow and she is a National Geographic Explorer for the Environment.
Chats with Champions is a free community offering from the national award winning Skidompha Public Library. The Chats’ series is sponsored by The First, 223 Main St., Damariscotta, a community bank that has grown to serve customers at 16 branches along Maine”s coast. For more information call 563-5513.
