Profs & Pints DC: Exploring the Deep Sea
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Exploring the Deep Sea,” a scholarly dive into an enormous and little-understood ecosystem, with Melissa Betters, deep ocean explorer and deep-sea biologist at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.
If you’re afraid of the deepest, darkest reaches of the ocean, you aren’t alone. For centuries, humans have imagined the ocean’s depths to be inhabited by all manner of monsters, from the Kraken to Godzilla.
But what is the cost of viewing over 70% of our planet with fear and aversion? Who benefits from that?
Come to see the deep sea as far more worthy of fascination than fear with the help of Dr. Melissa Betters, a biologist and marine ecosystem researcher who has made nine trips to the bottom of the ocean and taught at Bryn Mawr College and Temple University.
She’ll take you on a scholarly exploration of various deep-sea ecosystems around the world such as deep coral reefs and boiling-hot hydrothermal vents. We’ll get to know some of the deep ocean’s captivating biodiversity, examining where it lives, what it does, and why it matters to us.
With her help you’ll come to see the deep ocean as a tapestry of different environments, each of which host their own forms of life and present their own suite of ecological challenges.
Importantly, we’ll also look at how the deep ocean is portrayed in both myth and media, considering how our perceptions are skewed by the rhetoric used to describe it and the images used to depict it.
Despite appearing far-removed and out of reach, the deep ocean is still a part of our planet, subject to all the same challenges and human impacts as life on land. The final part of this talk will examine the variety of human impacts affecting the deep ocean and actions we can take to protect Earth’s final frontier. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Magnoteuthis magna, the most common deep-ocean squid, as photographed in Kinlan Canyon off of Rhode Island (NOAA Ocean Exploration photo).
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3555293-0
