CONTACT: Larry Mayer
603-862-2526
WRITER: Suki Casanave
603-862-3102
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE PROFESSOR TAPPED FOR PRESIDENTIAL PANEL ON OCEAN EXPLORATION
DURHAM, NH -- University of New Hampshire Professor Larry Mayer has been appointed to a panel mandated by President Clinton to help launch a new era in ocean exploration.Composed of 20 leading ocean explorers, scientists, and educators, Clinton's Ocean Exploration Panel is charged with recommending a long-term national strategy for exploring this last great frontier. The panel report is due on the President's desk October 10.
"Look at the effort put into space exploration during the past several decades," says Mayer, director of UNH's Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (C-COM) and Joint Hydrographic Center (JHC). "The oceans have really gotten short shrift, yet they're a lot closer to home and just as exciting, just as challenging. It's wonderful that the president has recognized this."
Exploring the Earth's final frontier may hold clues to the origin of life on our blue planet, cures for human disease, answers on how to achieve sustainable use of our oceans, links to our maritime history, and information to protect the endangered species of the sea.
"We are very pleased to learn about Professor Mayer's appointment to this panel," says Joan Leitzel, president of the University of New Hampshire. "His expertise will contribute a great deal to this critically important effort."
A world-renowned ocean mapping expert, Mayer has helped decipher earthquake faults off the coast of California and dump sites off the coast of Oahu. He has worked with Mobil Oil to map a pipeline route and with the World Wildlife Fund to produce maps of potential marine sanctuaries. More recently, he has worked with the National Park Service to help map the bottom of Oregon's Crater Lake, the deepest, clearest lake in the country.
When he's not on the water, Mayer is at work at UNH, where the recent establishment of the two joint centers--JHC and C-COM--makes the university a leader in ocean mapping. Together, they provide a two-pronged approach to oceanographic education and research available nowhere else in the country. The JHC offers training in hydrography--plotting the ocean's shallowest points for navigation purposes; C-COM provides education in the broader applications of ocean mapping, a complex world of three-dimensional detail revealed by multibeam sonar technology.
"We are proud of our joint ocean mapping centers and actively support the unique blend of research and related academic programs they provide," says Art Greenberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. "The professional judgment and spirit of exploration Larry Mayer brings to his work here at UNH and as an ocean explorer will be a critical contribution to President Clinton's panel."
The panel signifies an effort to rekindle the mode of exploration that guided science in the past, according to Mayer. "This is very different from hypothesis-driven science," he says. "You go out, not necessarily with a hypothesis, but with a well-conceived plan and an expectation that almost anything you find will be new and interesting. The discovery of hydrothermal vents and giant clams, for example, both happened by accident." Exploratory science is based on the conviction that more accidental discoveries remain to be made.
For more information on the university's ocean mapping centers, contact:
- Larry Mayer (lmayer@cisunix.unh.edu): 603-862-2615
- Andy Armstrong (andrewa@cisunix.unh.edu): 603-862-4559
Photo caption:
PORTRAITS OF THE DEEP: Recently appointed to the President's Ocean Exploration Panel, UNH's Larry Mayer produces complex three-dimensional maps of the sea floor revealed by multibeam sonar technology. Shown here is the area surrounding Alcatraz Island off the coast of California. (UNH Photo: Gary Samson and Doug Prince)